Many people have the goal of $1 million in savings, and a great way to reach this goal is investing in high-quality stocks. The power of compound interest is magical when applied over decades and is the most widely used method to build wealth in the modern world.
Don't let your money depreciate in a bank account. Buy stocks to invest for the long term instead. The only question is: What stocks should you buy today?
If you have $100,000 in savings, invest your money into these three stocks and wait a decade. You might just have $1 million in 10 years' time.
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ASML's market lock
A monopoly player in the artificial intelligence (AI) space, ASML (ASML -1.40%) makes lithography machines that enable manufacturers to build advanced computer chips. Complex lithography machines use lasers to enable the printing and layering of computer chips with transistors barely a few nanometers apart, which is the key to efficient and powerful computing.
After years of development, ASML was the first company to offer extreme ultraviolet lithography. No company -- or country, for that matter -- has been able to crack the code ever since. This means that semiconductor makers have only one vendor from which they can buy machines that let them build advanced computer chips, giving ASML a monopoly.
With the rise of AI, advanced computer chips are becoming more important by the day as companies race to build AI at scale. Nvidia is one of the key beneficiaries of ASML's technologies; without these machines, its computer chips would be much slower.
With AI spending growing like gangbusters, computer chip manufacturers are going to need more ASML machines to service this rising demand. Even though the company is already at $33 billion in trailing revenue, I think these sales figures can grow substantially over the next decade because of the hundreds of billions of dollars (perhaps trillions, at the end of the day) that will be spent on computer chips for AI.
ASML has fantastic profit margins because of its monopoly power, which means this soaring revenue will lead to huge earnings gains. In turn, this will produce strong stock returns for ASML shareholders.
Google's AI leadership
Another AI beneficiary -- and reason for ASML's rise -- is Alphabet (GOOG 0.66%). The technology giant is in a better position than anyone to take advantage of AI, which many technologists think will be more valuable than the internet.
Why is Alphabet in such a great position? It has distribution with billions of existing customers using its products like Google, YouTube, and Google Maps. It has a data advantage to train its AI tools in Google, YouTube, and Google Workspace. It has the best infrastructure for training and deploying AI compute because of its custom-built computer chips and Google Cloud infrastructure.
Across the board, perhaps no single company is better equipped than Alphabet to bring AI to the masses.
Even though Alphabet is already such a large business with $117 billion in annual operating income and a market cap of $2.2 trillion, I think AI will enable it to generate fantastic gains for shareholders over the next decade. Google Search is still humming along with new avenues for monetizing AI features, Google Cloud is growing revenue 28% year over year, and YouTube has a long runway to expand its monetization. Don't forget the self-driving taxi network Waymo, which is experiencing blistering growth across the United States.
Add it all up, and Alphabet is a stock you'll want to bet on for the next 10 years.
Airbnb's global expansion
AI may suck all of the oxygen from investing conversations these days, but there are still other stocks enjoying long-term tailwinds. Airbnb (ABNB -0.03%) is a travel disrupter with a lot of room to run over the next 10 years.
Many readers may know Airbnb as the travel platform for booking rooms and homes for trips around the globe. Customers spend close to $100 billion a year on lodging through Airbnb.
However, what many readers may not know is that the majority of Airbnb's bookings are made in just a few countries such as the United States, Australia, and France. Management believes geographic expansion is a huge opportunity for Airbnb as it localizes the service for different countries such as Japan.
Growth in new markets was double original markets last quarter. For example, Brazil's nights booked grew 27% year over year in the first quarter.
Second, Airbnb is moving beyond lodging, launching its revamped Experiences and Services tabs on the application recently. These are offerings such as massages, tour guides, and cooking classes that travelers may want to add to purchases. Airbnb aims to become a one-stop shop for travelers, building an ecosystem of marketplace services that will grow its addressable market.
It is early days, but these geographic expansions and new product offerings should give Airbnb a long runway to grow in the years to come. It is not like its original service won't grow either, as Airbnb keeps taking market share from traditional travel applications. With a market cap of $85.5 billion, Airbnb is a large but not gargantuan technology company, and I think it can help make shareholders rich if they buy today and hold for the next decade.
