If you're like most investors, your ultimate goal is growing your current capital into a much bigger nest egg meant to be enjoyed down the road. If you're also like most investors though, you don't have time to keep constant tabs on your portfolio.
Good news! There are plenty of solid stocks out there that offer a nice balance of reliability with long-term upside potential. Your lack of time arguably works in your favor too, since these are the sorts of tickers best left alone to let time do its thing.
Here's a rundown of three such names well-positioned to power your portfolio to a size greater than you may even be envisioning.
Dollar General
At first blush it looks like just another brick-and-mortar retailer -- a business facing an unrelenting uphill battle. However, a closer look at Dollar General (DG +0.04%) reveals it's thriving for all the right reasons.
NYSE: DG
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If you've never actually seen one, don't sweat it. It may be because the majority of the chain's 18,000-plus stores are located in communities with populations of less than 20,000, which tend to be underserved by bigger players like Kroger and Walmart. Yet three-fourths of U.S. residents live within five miles of a Dollar General, keeping them convenient for consumers looking to avoid a longer trip to a larger competitors' store. The average Dollar General locale's footprint is a modest 8,000 square feet as well, making them easy to get into and out of in a hurry.
The company isn't simply relying on a savvy location strategy to meet its growth goals, though. It's also thinking strategically about what one can find inside its stores. Unlike the average discounter, more and more Dollar General stores are carrying fresh foods like produce, eggs, and milk. Only a little over 2,100 stores currently offer this assortment, but Chief Operating Officer Jeff Owen commented in March that the ultimate goal was to eventually bring such staples to more than 10,000 locations. In the meantime, the retailer says it's still looking to open on the order of 1,100 new stores this year, and remodel more than 1,700.
It might have been difficult to believe a few years ago, but smaller, neighborhood-oriented general stores are looking like the future of retailing.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
While the worldwide semiconductor shortage is a problem for most tech companies, it's proving a boon for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM +0.96%).
As the name suggests, this company makes much-needed microchips. Its customers are paying almost any price for access to any silicon wherever they can find it. That's why Taiwan Semiconductor's top line is expected to grow more than 30% this year following last year's 18% uptick.
NYSE: TSM
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The situation is prompting bold responses from the tech industry. Looking to avoid similar supply problems in the future, several key semiconductor companies are planning to produce more of their own microchips in-house rather than rely on third-party manufacturers like Taiwan Semiconductor. Samsung is investing billions of dollars in its own production facilities, for instance, while Intel is committing $88 billion to build more of its own microchip foundries all across Europe. A few other names in the business are following this lead, albeit less dramatically, calling the need for outsourced chipmaking into question.
What's being lost in the worry is that even once all this new production capacity is brought online years down the road, it will still barely make a dent in the world's annual need for new semiconductors. McKinsey estimates the annual semiconductor market -- a big chunk of which is already handled by third-party manufacturers -- will grow from 2021's $600 billion to more than $1 trillion by 2030.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Semiconductor's most important customers like Apple, Qualcomm, and Advanced Micro Devices are among the tech names showing the least amount of interest in doing more in-house production of their own silicon. All in all, this should be good news for Taiwan Semiconductor.
Amazon
Amazon (AMZN +1.36%) stock is up by more than 1,000% over the past 10 years and over 19,000% for the past 20 years, making it one of the market's most rewarding names during that stretch.
NASDAQ: AMZN
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results, of course. And this may be particularly true in the case of Amazon. There's only so much online shopping the world can do, and the company's perpetually paper-thin profit margins on its e-commerce operation has turned into a major problem this year. With shipping, payroll, and other costs being so high, the company's actually lost money by selling physical goods. Its year-to-date e-commerce loss in North America has reached $2.2 billion, with Amazon remaining in the red for both reported quarters. Internationally, selling goods online has led to more than a $3 billion loss in 2022.
It may not matter though, even if the company continues to lose money with its online marketplace. Its roots may be selling physical goods online, but that's no longer the company's core profit center. Although it only accounts for 16% of its revenue, Amazon Web Services produced nearly three-fourths of last year's income. Moreover, AWS's bottom line has only continued to grow this year.
And before you float the idea of Amazon ending its online-selling business to focus on its firmly profitable cloud computing venture, understand that e-commerce is still a means to an important end. Amazon leveraged the reach of its online marketplace to produce $31 billion worth of ad revenue supplied by many of the third-party sellers using the platform to promote their goods. Although the company didn't disclose how much of that revenue was turned into a profit, digital ad revenue tends to be high-margin.
It's an exciting, long-term growth prospect simply because Amazon is still figuring out how to make the most of both of these young initiatives.
