What’s the best performing stock of all time?
We’re talking about a total percentage gain of 265,528,901%.
$1,000 invested in this stock would be worth over $2.5 billion today.
To answer this question, we turned to Hank Bessembinder, who authored the famous academic paper “Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?“
80 stocks have returns of over 500,000% in their lifetime.
Some guessed Berkshire (BRK), but that was only a 792,053% return. Microsoft (MSFT)? A paltry 622,498%.
The winner was Altria (MO)!
Here is a recent podcast we did with Hank, and the full list of the top 20 is below.
Most people probably assume that the best performing stock returned something like 30% or 50% per year.
Only six stocks out of the top 100 had returns of over 20% per annum.
Most of the best performing stocks had returns in the mid teens, not shabby of course and better than the broad index, but not the eye popping returns you see being advertised on Instagram…
The key is just that they did it for a very long time.
Here’s a nice graphic with some insights from Hank’s great work, and he’s now written a paper on the topic, “Which US Stocks Generated the Highest Long Term Returns?”
Enjoy!
| Company Name (Most Recent) | Cumulative Return | Geometric Mean Return (Annualized) | First Date | Last Date |
| ALTRIA GROUP INC | 265528901% | 16.28% | 31-Dec-25 | 29-Dec-23 |
| VULCAN MATERIALS CO | 39349084% | 14.04% | 31-Dec-25 | 29-Dec-23 |
| KANSAS CITY SOUTHERN | 36175578% | 14.26% | 31-Dec-25 | 13-Dec-21 |
| GENERAL DYNAMICS CORP | 22084880% | 13.38% | 28-Jan-26 | 29-Dec-23 |
| BOEING CO | 21220526% | 14.71% | 5-Sep-34 | 29-Dec-23 |
| INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHS COR | 17543644% | 13.10% | 31-Dec-25 | 29-Dec-23 |
| EATON CORP PLC | 15117168% | 12.93% | 31-Dec-25 | 29-Dec-23 |
| S & P GLOBAL INC | 12878643% | 13.19% | 14-Feb-29 | 29-Dec-23 |
| COCA COLA CO | 12372265% | 12.70% | 31-Dec-25 | 29-Dec-23 |
| PEPSICO INC | 8635938% | 12.29% | 31-Dec-25 | 29-Dec-23 |
| ABBOTT LABORATORIES | 7803730% | 13.84% | 1-Mar-37 | 29-Dec-23 |
| UNIVERSAL CORP | 7031701% | 12.30% | 11-Nov-27 | 29-Dec-23 |
| DEERE & CO | 6988539% | 13.11% | 29-Jun-33 | 29-Dec-23 |
| HERSHEY CO | 6909822% | 12.29% | 1-Dec-27 | 29-Dec-23 |
| WYETH | 5702342% | 14.01% | 29-Apr-26 | 15-Oct-09 |
| JOHNSON & JOHNSON | 5427969% | 14.74% | 25-Sep-44 | 29-Dec-23 |
| ARCHER DANIELS MIDLAND CO | 5181049% | 11.71% | 31-Dec-25 | 29-Dec-23 |
| C V S HEALTH CORP | 4693846% | 11.95% | 27-Sep-28 | 29-Dec-23 |
| U S T INC | 4396204% | 13.73% | 31-Dec-25 | 5-Jan-09 |
