re: If you had to pick one stock for the next 18 years.

I agree Amazon is a great company and I bought a bunch of stuff on there this weekend. I think the government is going to be knocking on there door at some point in the near future because they are such a great company. Look at all of the brick and mortar stores that are closing or posting poor numbers. An argument could be made on both sides if Amazon is good or bad for the American economy. The government is the one foe that could stop them in their tracks.

Well let me ask you guys this. If you had to invest in something for your Godchildren/children/grandchildren over the next 18 years, what would it be? If not a single stock.

And it's high valuations toward the later stages of a 7 year bull market. Probably not the best time to be buying extremely high valued stocks.

A historical perspective is always interesting to me, imagine if you had asked this question 30 years ago and we were looking at what stocks actually performed the best over that period. as of 2012 these were the hot stocks of the previous 30 years.



Apple is in there, Microsoft was excluded because it was not in existence the entire 30 years, but some of the best investments were in companies most people had never heard of.

I have the same philosophy dabigfella. Paying a dividend also makes the company more conservative with their cash and the management more accountable. It keeps the company from wasting tons of money on ridiculous projects like Google does.

If I had to pick only 10 companies to hold the rest of my life MKC would be one of them. I finally was able to buy a little last fall when it fell to the $70's. I just wish I had more shares.

Ecolab
ECL

The difference between Microsoft of the 90's and Apple now is that Microsoft was extremely overvalued. Microsoft of the 90's is the equivalent of buying Facebook now.

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I believe in what google is doing but it scares me that the stock was split up to keep away people who may want to force them to look after investors and now its just a play thing for these billionaires with these wild ideas.

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You do realize that the only people who would try to come in and get a large enough stake to have an effect on a company are the activist investor types, right? Icahn isn't going to look out for the average investor at all. He'll bully his way into getting some short term gain from the company that is typically a poor long term decision and then move on. Making it hard or impossible for activists to come in only helps the company, and since the billionaire founders also own a large amount of stock, they're going to make smart long-term decisions; why would anyone throw away something so incredible that they've made?

Plus, your two problems with Google are inconsistent. The second says you're concerned about their current main revenue source, and your second is critical that they're pouring money into R&D to find something for future revenue. R&D is the path of survival in technology, and the fact that their engineers and developers have the freedom to work on what they want helps them get and keep great talent and great ideas. It's also incredibly important to understand the high failure rate of R&D in any industry. And let's face it: people learn more from failures, which they'll then use to find success.

Criticizing Google for having failures is a poor choice. How many does AAPL have, including however many of their projects that have failed without ever seeing the light of day? Probably a lot as well. The first iPhone project probably faced plenty of failure. Learning from that failure and pushing through it is the way to grow, and this goes beyond just business.

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fair points but google today is crticized for making too many moves that havent panned out while apple is criticized for not making any meaningful acquisitions. They're two totally different companies, I like google but until one of these moonshots pans out the reality is that ad blockers are growing by the day and currently ad revenue is their big driver so it worries me a little.

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Perhaps. I see Google just letting their workforce find something they're passionate about to work on. Maybe a project will succeed, maybe it'll fail, but they have so many projects it doesn't matter too much because of the diversification. Really, the projects don't have to produce spectacular results; smaller consistent successes can outweigh occasional brilliance. Their search engine and the ads (plus the ads on Youtube) are a stable base and source of cashflow to fund everything else.

AAPL feels like it has lost its old self. Jobs is dead, and the innovative spirit AAPL is known for seems dead, too. Cook is a logistics guy. The company probably won't fail under him unless the iPhone loses people's favor like the Blackberry. Instead, the company will be fairly well managed and operate like a good blue chip, but innovation is to be desired. For innovation, the company needs to either acquire good/great ideas or pour money into R&D. Both seem mostly absent for the company.

The big future project is the Apple car, which I think is a bad idea. The auto industry is already one with high barriers to entry, and the industry typically overproduces vehicles to capture economies of scale. This leads to entrenched players in the industry that will do what they must to survive and beat the competition. That isn't ideal for Apple's high margin business model. People get excited about Google, Tesla, and Apple trying to enter the industry and make waves, but the players are adapting - they are developing electric and self-driving cars, too. I won't go into detail here, but Tesla is overvalued when considered as a potential player in the industry. They should focus on building better battery systems to supply the existing car makers and maybe have a luxury brand of their own cars. I think that is where the company would find success in the industry, as well as developing better solar panel technology. As for AAPL and Google, I'd like to see them providing the software and hardware for future cars, regardless of whether those cars are driverless/electric or not.

So that's where I think those two companies stand. I suppose I like Google over AAPL, but I'm not sure I'd invest in them or any other tech stock for 18 years. That's a long time, particularly in tech.

For the 18 year discussion, I'd probably buy BRK B shares or SPY at first for diversification. Once the capital has grown to a certain size, I'd sell or reduce those positions and start picking individual stocks. I'd try to avoid getting stuck with one or a few stocks for the entirety of those 18 years, particularly if I think the price is too high and/or I don't approve of the direction the company is taking (since obviously I wouldn't have the capital to sway management's mind). That's what I'd do. For most people, it would be easier to buy a few index funds and/or conglomerates like BRK that are in many industries.

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund