The Best of the Best: Top Performing Stock of the Past 30 Years

Lately I have been contemplating what makes a company great. What are the building blocks that set a stock up for truly phenomenal long-term performance? Can we, as investors, find a trail of crumbs that lead us to the proverbial “great” company? A simple construct, but a lot of work for my feeble brain.

A lot of people much smarter than myself have tackled this topic, spent lifetimes researching it, and written volumes on the subject. I am not going to break any new ground. Rather, I simply want to share my starting point - a list of the top performing stocks over the last 30, 25, and 20 years (criteria: end date of 12/31/2013, traded on a U.S. exchange, ending market cap greater than $2 billion).

By going through some old Value Line manuals, I've been able to step back in “real” time and see what was happening and how the company was performing before it began its phenomenal run. It has been an enlightening experience (hint:  as Buffett/Greenblatt/(insert other great value investor) has said, ROIC really is important).

Hopefully you too can get some use out of the list. If you have thoughts or ideas on what made these companies great, or want to discuss them in more detail, please feel free to email (email on the right).

Rank	30 Yrs.	Ann. Return	25 Yrs.	Ann. Return	20 Yrs.	Ann. Return
1	Amgen Inc.	25.20%	Brown & Brown	27.10%	Monster Bev	35.40%
2	Danaher Corp.	23.70%	Drew Industries	25.30%	USANA Health	33.80%
3	Kansas City Sthrn	22.70%	Kansas City Sthrn	24.50%	Biogen Idec Inc.	33.80%
4	HollyFrontier Co.	21.70%	UnitedHealth Grp	24.00%	Keurig Gr Mtn	33.60%
5	Paychex Inc.	21.20%	Jack Henry	23.40%	Celgene Corp.	33.00%
6	The Gap Inc.	21.10%	Polaris Industries	22.10%	Gilead Sciences	31.20%
7	Nike Inc.	20.60%	Micros Systems	21.70%	Middleby Corp.	30.20%
8	Altria Group	20.30%	Balchem Crop.	20.50%	Astronics Corp.	28.90%
9	Precision Castparts	20.30%	EMC Corp.	20.20%	Cooper Comp.	28.20%
10	Stryker Corp.	20.20%	Charles Schwab	20.00%	Balchem Corp.	27.30%

Data:  Bloomberg

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