Nvidia Is the Best S&P 500 Stock of the Past 10, 15, 20 Years — but 4 Stocks Beat It Over the Past 5 Years

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NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock has been one of the top gainers over the past five years, with the company becoming the ninth public company to hit a market capitalization of $1 trillion or more. While Nvidia stock has dominated several top-performing lists over the last 20 years, the stock ranks fifth in five-year returns.

• Nvidia stock is showing upward bias. What’s ahead for NVDA stock?

Top Performing Stocks Past Five Years

Nvidia stock has regularly battled Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock over the past year for the title of most valuable company in the world. When it comes to the stock with the biggest gain in recent years, that title actually belongs to an HVAC and plumbing company.

Comfort Systems USA (NYSE:FIX) is the top-performing stock over the past five years with a total return of +2,274, according to data shared on social media by Charlie Bilello, who is chief market strategist at Creative Planning.

Nvidia ranks fifth over the last five years for total return. Here is the top five list shared by Bilello:

1. Comfort Systems : +2,274%
2. Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU ): +1,305%
3. Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX ): +1,151%
4. Lumentum Holdings (NASDAQ: LITE ): +1,078%
5. Nvidia : +1,019%

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Top Performing Stocks Other Time Periods

While Nvidia ranks only fifth for the past five years, the semiconductor stock dominates other multi-year return lists as shown below.

Top Stocks 10-Year Total Return

1. Nvidia : +14,468%
2. Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD ): +7,543%
3. Micron Technology : +6,575%
4. Comfort Systems : +6,556%
5. Seagate Technology : +4,574%

Top Stocks 15-Year Total Return

1. Nvidia : +76,248%
2. Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA ): +19,414%
3. Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO ): +17,545%
4. Micron Technology : +16,026%
5. Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ: AXON ): +15,654%

Top Stocks 20-Year Total Return

1. Nvidia : +63,261%
2. Netflix Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX ): +27,380%
3. Monolithic Power Systems (NASDAQ: MPWR ): +19,745%
4. Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN ): +19,700%
5. Comfort Systems : +17,198%

What Investors Should Know

Nvidia and Comfort Systems both make the top five for five-year and 20-year returns. Most of the lists look somewhat different, especially when investors look at Bilello’s tweet beyond the top five.

While only the top five of each period are shared above, here’s a look at the companies that made the top 20 in more than one time period, with rankings in order for five-year, 10-year, 15-year and 20-year:

• Nvidia : 5 ^th , 1 ^st , 1 ^st , 1 ^st
• Micron : 2 ^nd , 3 ^rd , 5 ^th , 15 ^th
• Seagate : 3 ^rd , 5 ^th , 7 ^th , 11 ^th
• Lumentum : 4 ^th , 10 ^th , NA, NA
• Comfort Systems : 1 ^st , 4 ^th , 2 ^nd , 5 ^th
• Broadcom : 12 ^th , NA, 4 ^th , NA
• Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET ): 14 ^th , 7 ^th , NA, NA
• Ciena Corporation (NYSE: CIEN ): 15 ^th , 19 ^th , NA, NA
• Quanta Services (NYSE: PWR ): 16 ^th , 11 ^th , 19 ^th , NA
• EMCOR Group (NYSE: EME ): 17 ^th , NA, 20 ^th , NA
• Advanced Micro Devices: NA, 2 ^nd , 12 ^th , NA
• Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ: LRCX ): NA, 6 ^th , NA, 12 ^th
• KLA Corporation (NASDAQ: KLAC ): NA, 8 ^th , 10 ^th , 13 ^th
• Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ: FTNT ): NA, 12 ^th , 18 ^th , NA
• Tesla : NA, 13 ^th , 3 ^rd , NA
• Axon Enterprises : NA, 15 ^th , 6 ^th , 14 ^th
• Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT ): NA, 17 ^th , 14 ^th , NA
• Monolithic Power : NA, 18 ^th , 8 ^th , 3 ^rd
• Texas Pacific Land (NYSE: TPL ): NA, 20 ^th , 11 ^th , 9 ^th
• United Rentals (NYSE: URI ): NA, NA, 13 ^th , 17 ^th

Over the last 20 years, some of the best performing stocks have continued to be top gainers across every five year period, but that number is limited. Only four stocks ranked among the top 20 in each of the five-year periods. Twenty stocks made the top 20 in at least two of the time periods.

Only four of the Magnificent Seven stocks made at least one list with Apple also ranking seventh in the 20-year returns. Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet failed to make a single top 20 list.

Investors can see from the charts that the top performing stocks are constantly changing, while some may remain the same going forward for the next five years, it’s likely they won’t. Once gains of 1,000% or more are made, it’s harder for a stock to keep growing at the same exponential pace.

Read Also: Micron's Spectacular Rally May Not Have Happened If Not For McDonald's Potato Supplier

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