Need more proof that my brain has been permanently warped by a life spent pondering Wall Street? Here it is. Having recently found out that I'm an uncle-to-be, my thoughts quickly turned toward what stock I'd like to buy as a gift for the little tyke.
The way I see it, there'll be relatives coming out of the woodwork with baby clothes and toys, but I'd like to give him or her something that will create more enduring value, and fewer embarrassing photo moments. Since this sounded like a reasonably interesting project, I invited my fellow Fools to chime in with their thoughts.
What follows is a brief series of takes highlighting our choices for an 18-year buy-and-hold position. As always, this is a collection of ideas from our writers, not a set of soup-to-nuts treatises on the companies in question. You'll still have to do your own due diligence.
It's also worth noting that 18-year investment horizons are not at all typical or even recommended. Simply put, there are just too many things that can happen between now and then for a long-term "buy and forget" strategy to be truly Foolish. But here and there, we all manage to find ideas that give us significantly above-average confidence in a company's long-term potential. The ability to maintain a powerful competitive advantage, and the right set of underlying trends for support, might just help keep these firms going strong in 18 years' time.
Without further ado, let's look at some of our Fools' ideas that might allow Baby to enter the world in financially Foolish style:
- Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ)
- Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX)
- Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG)
- Disney (NYSE:DIS)
- Stryker (NYSE:SYK)
- General Electric (NYSE:GE)
- Bank of America (NYSE:BAC)
- Vanguard 500 Index (FUND:VFINX)
Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares). Starbucks is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick, while Bank of America is a Motley Fool Income Investor pick. The Fool has a disclosure policy.
