Many investors say they approach their stock-picking with a long-term mindset. The fact is, however, it's much easier to muster the guts you need to step into a "forever" holding when you know you can get out of it at the first sign of trouble. If you truly have to commit to a multi-decade holding period, you might be considerably pickier.
With that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three stocks you can feel good about buying with the intent of leaving then-bigger stakes in them to your children -- or even your grandchildren -- in the future.
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1. Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola (KO +0.78%) is such a commonly suggested stock pick that it's almost become cliché. The thing about clichés is, they become clichés for good reason. It's a testament to their truth or accuracy.
No, you'll never score a massive gain with a stake in Coca-Cola. It's just not that kind of company, or business. Last year's 6% year-over-year revenue growth on a 2% improvement in total volume is pretty typical. What the beverage giant lacks in raw firepower, however, it more than makes up for in reliability and consistency.
Credit the nature of the beverage industry, mostly. It's not like the automobile business or highly cyclical real estate. Consumer staples are always in demand, and usually reasonably priced. Purchasing them doesn't require any planning or a minimum degree of income.
And the company casts a rather wide net. In addition to its namesake soda, Coca-Cola is also parent to Dasani water, Powerade sports drink, Sprite, Gold Peak tea, and Minute Maid juice, just to name a few. It's got something to meet every consumer's ever-changing preference.
NYSE: KO
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The kicker: Coca-Cola's business model is brilliant, and persistently profitable. See, it doesn't actually do much of its own bottling these days, where expenses can be volatile. Coca-Cola's business is selling flavor concentrates to third-party bottling partners and letting them figure out how to make production and distribution affordable. This allows the company to focus even more on what it does best: marketing.
Of course, it's got some of the best-known brand names to work with. That makes its marketing work much easier.
All that being said, just know that most of your net gains here are likely to be driven by this stock's ever-growing dividend, and your reinvestment of these payouts in more shares. In this vein, Coca-Cola has now raised its annual per-share dividend payments for 63 consecutive years. It's unlikely to break the streak now.
2. Amazon
There's no denying Amazon (AMZN 0.41%) has been a fantastic investment since its IPO back in 1997. Indeed, the stock's up nearly 300,000% from that point. Wow!
That's obviously a tough act to follow. It's unlikely shares will repeat the feat, in fact. The growth opportunity between then and now -- the advent of e-commerce -- was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, and Amazon brilliantly capitalized on it in just the right way. This kind of opportunity won't surface again for the company anytime soon, if ever.
NASDAQ: AMZN
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Nevertheless, Amazon remains a great multigenerational investment for one simple but easily overlooked reason: It's not an e-commerce company. It's an enterprise that happens to be in the online-shopping business right now because that's the one that made the most sense to start with and stick with. Since then, it's added cloud computing, but just as important, it's evolved its e-commerce operation with the addition of advertising and a streaming platform that funnels consumers to its online shopping platform.
This is no trivial detail, either. It's become part of the company's corporate ethos to experiment aggressively, keeping whatever works, and discarding whatever doesn't. Founder Jeff Bezos described it as being willing to "fail fast, fail often." Current CEO Andy Jassy agrees with the idea, though, recently suggesting that the 30-year-old company still aims to operate like "the world's largest start-up."
The thing is, it works. While plenty of enterprises would struggle to function with this sort of corporate culture, Amazon's lean corporate structure and ultra-picky hiring means the right people can do clever things the best way possible. You can reasonably count on this organization continuing to evolve as needed for generations to come.
3. Berkshire Hathaway
Finally, add Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A +0.01%) (BRK.B 0.24%) to your list of stocks that could create generational wealth.
OK, it's not a stock in the traditional sense. It's not a mutual fund, either, even though one-third of its current values reflects the total value of all of its stock holdings. It's technically a conglomerate, by virtue of holding dozens of privately owned businesses like flooring company Shaw, Dairy Queen, Duracell batteries, railroad BNSF, Geico insurance, and several others.
Even then, however, the description doesn't quite do the company justice. Berkshire Hathaway is mostly whatever CEO Warren Buffett and his lieutenants want it to be. Not unlike Amazon, they'll invest in whatever makes the most sense at any given time (including just sitting on a pile of cash), and they'll do it in a way that makes the most sense.
While it's focused on stock-picking for the past few years, for instance, it's not been afraid to outright acquire and privatize the right enterprises, as it did with Lubrizol, the aforementioned Shaw, and industrial metalworks company Precision Castparts back in 2016, just to name a few.
NYSE: BRK.B
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But Buffett's stepping down as CEO and chief stock-picking guru at the end of this year? That's true. And it will certainly dial back the magic factor that his presence seems to bring to the table. It already seems to have done so just a bit, in fact.
After 60 years at the helm though, as is the case with Bezos and Amazon, Buffett's patience and value-minded spirit should live on with Berkshire Hathaway for decades to come.
You'll want your family to hold on to this multigenerational investment as long as it possibly can, in fact, since time seems to be its best performance-driving friend. Over the course of the past 30 years, despite the occasional bout of weakness, Berkshire Hathaway stock's performance is about 50% better than the S&P 500's (^GSPC +0.11%), even after adding the index's reinvested dividends into the mix. Don't be surprised to see this sort of leadership continue well into the distant future, either.
