4 ‘Hold Forever’ Stocks That Have Stood the Test of Time

On the April 20, 2026, episode of The Morning Filter podcast, David Sekera and Susan Dziubinski answer a viewer question about high-quality companies that can be held for the long term. Here is an excerpt from the show.

Why Investors Should ‘Buy and Manage’ Instead of ‘Buy and Hold’ Stocks

Susan Dziubinski: Let’s move on to our question of the week. Now, as a reminder, the best way to get your questions to us is via our email, which is themorningfilter@morningstar.com. This week’s question is one that actually came in during the webinar that Dave and Preston did a couple of weeks ago, and we thought this would be a good question that would be of interest to The Morning Filter’s audience. The question is: Can you share some high-quality compounding stocks that can be bought and held for decades?

David Sekera: I think as an investor, you need to be really careful when people talk about buying and holding. In my mind, it’s not necessarily buy and hold, but it should be buy and manage. What I mean by that is once you’ve bought a stock, it’s not game over; you just buy it, and you just leave it there. I think you need to monitor those positions going forward and then adjust those position sizes as prices or valuations change. Over time, once you’ve bought a stock based on a specific investment thesis, you need to monitor if that investment thesis is coming to fruition or if there might be anything that causes that investment thesis to change over time. The market’s always moving. You always have changes in valuations. Depending on how much a stock moves from that fair value, you can always buy more if it dips too far.

When it moves up too far to the upside, you can always scale out of some of your position to be able to capture those profits. Of course, you need to monitor what’s going on with the industry dynamics of the underlying company that you’re invested in and make sure that’s not something that’s going to change that company’s performance over the longer term.

How Have ‘Hold Forever’ Stocks Held Up?

Dziubinski: Dave, share with our audience the research that you shared with me in the office last week about companies from the past 20 years and 30 years that many investors at that point in time considered to be those “hold for decades” or “hold forever” stocks. Talk about where they are today.

Sekera: What I did was I pulled up the 20 largest stocks by market capitalization from 20 years ago and 30 years ago, and compared that to today, to see whether or not—and if so—how many companies that were the largest by market cap 20 and 30 years ago were still those same stocks in today’s list. It was really interesting looking at a lot of these names that were companies that people would’ve considered to be rock solid 30 years ago. One that really came to mind was like General Electric. That was a company that, back in the day, used to outperform every single quarter, yet that one was a spectacular blowup during the 2007-08 credit crisis. I remember its subsidiary, GECC, General Electric Credit Corp was an AAA rated entity that a lot of people thought was going to go bankrupt during the credit crisis.

That one has gone through a lot of machinations, a lot of breakups since then. You had a number of different tobacco companies that used to be some of the largest market cap companies back then, certainly no longer anywhere near the top 20 list anymore. Some of the big drug companies back then, like Merck MRK and Pfizer PFE, were some of the largest companies, but they haven’t been able to replace some of the drugs coming off patent with new blockbuster drugs. So, those have fallen to the wayside. Lastly, Intel. If you think about it, 20 and 30 years ago, it was the king of the semiconductor sector. But over the past couple of years, we think they’ve fallen behind in the technology cycle behind some of these other companies like Nvidia NVDA, Broadcom AVGO, AMD AMD. Another one, Wallets, certainly had a huge run here over the past year, certainly nowhere close to being anywhere near a top 20 market cap company today.

Why These 4 Stocks Will Still Hold for the Long Term

Dziubinski: There were a few companies that you looked at over that past 20- and 30-year time period that have in fact endured. Tell us what they were and if any of them are still stocks that you think investors can maybe continue to hold for decades.

Sekera: If I look at the top 20 largest by market cap over the past 20 years and then the 30 years, there are only four that are still in the top 20 today. Those being Microsoft MSFT, Walmart WMT, Exxon XOM, and J&J JNJ. These are all probably very good names. They certainly can be core holdings in most people’s portfolios. Based on their valuations today, some of them we do think still look attractive. Some of the others, not so much. For example, Microsoft, and we’ve talked about Microsoft a lot and why we think it’s so undervalued. Again, a 5-star-rated stock, 30% discount, and a company we rate with a wide economic moat. In fact, a very wide economic moat, only a medium uncertainty. That one still looks good to us today from a valuation point of view.

Exxon, of course, had a huge runup over the past year, specifically in the past month or so, with the rest of the oil sector. That one’s now only at a 3% discount, which puts it pretty close to the middle of our 3-star territory. Again, a company with a wide economic moat. It’s long been our go-to pick among the oil majors, but I would prefer to see a larger margin of safety before you buy a new position in that stock. But if you need some oil exposure in your portfolio, I certainly wouldn’t argue against buying that one today.

The other two, however, we think are overvalued for what we think the long-term intrinsic valuation of those companies is. J&J at a 23% premium is a 1-star rated stock. Again, a wide economic moat, low uncertainty, a lot of very attractive fundamental characteristics for the company from that valuation point of view, but we think it’s just run up too far to the upside in the marketplace today. Lastly, Walmart, again, another wide economic stock, a wide economic moat stock, medium uncertainty. Fundamentally, it has been doing very well for the past couple of years. But the stock has now doubled our fair value, and trades at 43 times our 2026 earnings estimate. It’s a 1-star-rated stock. In my mind, I think now’s a better time to be taking profits in Walmart than it would be to hold, much less buy it today.

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