If I Could Only Buy and Hold a Single Stock, This Would Be It (Hint: Not Nvidia)

One of the smartest moves an investor can make is buying and holding high-quality stocks for the long term.

Patience is what separates short-term traders from long-term wealth builders. According to J.P. Morgan Asset Management, a $10,000 investment in the benchmark S&P 500 index from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2025, earned an annualized return of 10%. However, when only the 10 best trading days in this period were missed due to selling, the annual return fell to 5.6%.

While this may hold for the overall market, all stocks are not created equal. Only a few are resilient enough to reward long-term investors. According to Hendrik Bessembinder’s study “Do stocks outperform Treasury Bills?,” just over 4% of stocks managed to push the stock market’s returns over that of Treasury bills fr