I saw an interesting tweet the other day that got me thinking.
Sorry, I guess I should say I saw an interesting “post” on X – the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Crazy name changes aside, BNN Bloomberg anchor Jon Erlichman posted a list of 18 top stocks and what they would be worth today if anyone invested $10,000 15 years ago.
These are some of the whoppers. Returns ranged from nearly 40,000% in Nvidia (NVDA) to a “mere” 1,014% in Starbucks (SBUX).
They are all well-known brands and companies. And chances are pretty good you own or have owned one or more through the years…
On the one hand, we need to take these numbers with a grain of salt. Fifteen years ago puts us in 2009, which, if you remember, was the year the market bottomed after the financial crisis that almost took down our whole system. Investors with the courage to put money in stocks at that time probably did well with most of their investments.
On the other hand, these are clearly massive returns that most other companies can’t match.
You can probably guess what I did.
I love any opportunity to run stocks through my Quantum Edge system, so I fired it up and got to work. I wanted to know if my system and the Quantum Score it generates would have spotted these huge winners.
I’m pleased to say the answer is yes. Ten of the 18 stocks appeared on my systems elite Top 20 list – the absolute best stocks in the market that Big Money is buying – that year, and went on to an average peak return of 6,250%. Here they are…
Notice the Quantum Scores are almost all in the buy range I target between 70 and 85. That score factors in the fundamentals, technicals, and Big Money inflows of more than 6,000 stocks every day, and the resulting Quantum Score is incredibly effective at telling us whether each stock is a good buy or not.
It worked then. So how do these stocks rate now?
Here’s what I found…
Great Stocks Often Remain Great Stocks for a Long Time
The first thing to notice is that there are a lot of familiar names on that list. And the data tells us that many of them remain great stocks all these years later.
You can see Nvidia (NVDA) at the top of the profits list of both the tweet and my own system’s data. Ten grand in the one-time king of graphics-processing units (GPS) – and current heartthrob for AI chips – would have returned more than $4 million today, according to the tweet.
One look at that chart and you can be sure that most investors wouldn’t have stuck around for 15 years. A lot of folks don’t hold stocks that long anyway, and NVDA would have required both patience in the early years and fortitude in the later years with some wild price swings.
That said, it’s a huge winner, even if most of that has come in the last four years. And with a stellar Quantum Score of 84.5, it still rates a strong buy in my Quantum Edge system.
Source: TradeSmith Finance and MAPsignals.com
Big Money has also been quite active in NVDA, with my system picking up 22 buy signals (unusually heavy buying) so far this year.
NVDA has more than tripled in the past year, and that helps generate the exceptional Technical Score of 88.2. If that weren’t accompanied by the strong fundamentals at 79.2, I’d be more concerned. The data indicates higher prices in the long term, but with the company now valued at $2.4 trillion, future returns may not keep pace with the latest incredible surge.
You might assume NVDA is the top-rated stock on the list, and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. But it would be incorrect.
Alphabet (GOOGL) is the highest-rated stock is. The company that started out as Google has generated 1,641% gains in 15 years, and its Quantum Score of 86.2 ties it for the third-highest rating among the more than 6,000 stocks my system analyzes.
Source: TradeSmith Finance and MAPsignals.com
Be aware that the Technical Score over 90 signals the stock is overheated and that a near-term pullback in is more likely than not. Longer term, though, that Fundamental Score of 79.2 (which matches Nvidia’s) indicates higher prices in the future.
As with Nvidia, Alphabet is now valued at more than $2 trillion. To double from here would put it over $4 trillion, which no company has yet to achieve. Microsoft (MSFT) is the only one currently over $3 trillion.
NVDA and GOOGL are the only two stocks on that list with Quantum Scores in the 80s, but 12 of the 18 stocks are currently in my targeted buy zone between 70 and 85. In addition to Nvidia and Alphabet, you have:
- Crocs (CROX): 79.3
- Netflix (NFLX): 79.3
- Costco (COST): 75.9
- Salesforce (CRM): 75.9
- United Rentals (URI): 75.9
- Chipotle (CMG): 74.1
- Skechers (SKX): 74.1
- Domino’s Pizza (DPZ): 72.4
- Microsoft (MSFT): 72.4
- Amazon (AMZN): 70.7
At the other end of the spectrum, only one stock scored below 50. Starbucks (SBUX) comes in at 39.7, weighed down by an extremely low Technical Score of 14.7.
Source: TradeSmith Finance and MAPsignals.com
Shares have fallen 22% so far this year, more than half of which came in the last two weeks after the company reported a significant decline in customer traffic.
That’s a big concern, for sure. And while the stock does not rate a buy at the moment, we see an interesting phenomenon I call divergence. That 60-point spread between the fundamentals and technicals is massive… and rare… and not likely to stay that way. It’s a quant version of likely oversold, and historically the strong fundamentals lift the share price.
It’s worth keeping an eye on Starbucks for now, as these five-year lows could end up being a buying opportunity. I would just want to make sure the trend has reversed before putting any money into it.
So yes, great stocks often remain great stocks. Be selective about what you buy – look for strong businesses with rising share prices and Big Money inflows. Look for stocks with a strong Quantum Score.
These are the kinds of stocks I invest in and recommend to my readers. You can often hold the great ones for years and make those doubles, triples, 10xers, and more.
Talk soon,
Jason Bodner
Editor, Jason Bodner’s Power Trends
Disclosure: On the date of publication, Jason Bodner held a position in Nvidia (NVDA), Chipotle (CMG), Alphabet (GOOGL), Costco (COST), and Starbucks (SBUX) mentioned in this article.