If I Were Starting Over With $500 to Invest, I'd Begin by Building a Portfolio Around This Unstoppable Stock

2 months ago 38

James Brumley, The Motley Fool

Sun, July 26, 2026 astatine 11:50 AM CDT 4 min read

Like astir investors, I stepped into the banal marketplace alternatively cautiously, doing my champion to travel Warren Buffett's superior rule: "Don't suffer money."

Three decades later, I present recognize I didn't afloat admit the nuances of this tip. Namely, I conflated impermanent setbacks with locking successful losses. Oh, I knew the quality betwixt realized and unrealized. It's conscionable that, mentally, I convinced myself that immoderate pullbacks ne'er stop. Big mistake. Most do. This mindset kept maine retired of immoderate stocks that would person ended up being precise large winners.

Missed Nvidia successful 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" awesome flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the archetypal clip successful years, that aforesaid "Total Conviction" awesome is flashing for a institution 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »

I can't spell backmost successful clip and bash things over. I can, however, assistance others larn from my mistakes and archer them the precise archetypal banal I would person bought and held backmost past if I had known past what I cognize now. That's Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG).

A young capitalist is sitting successful beforehand of a laptop computer.

Alphabet has been unstoppable

OK, Google wasn't astir erstwhile I archetypal started investing. It wouldn't beryllium until 1998, and it didn't spell nationalist until 2004. If I were conscionable starting retired oregon starting implicit again today, however, it would beryllium the foundational presumption successful my portfolio.

That surprises a fewer people. It's a volatile exertion stock, aft all, and blistery tech stocks travel and go, replaced by the adjacent large ones.

Except, that's intelligibly not been the lawsuit here. Over the past 28 years, Alphabet's Google has go the superior gatekeeper of the World Wide Web. Over 90% of the planet's web hunt queries are made utilizing Google, according to numbers from Statcounter, portion Google's operating strategy Android is installed connected astir 70% of the world's mobile devices. Gmail remains the most-used escaped email work with (company-reported) 3 cardinal users, and wrong the United States, YouTube garners much full watch-time than Netflix and each of Disney's streaming services combined. And the usage of each of these platforms is simply a self-enforcing wont that would beryllium pugnacious to interruption now. Alphabet simply needs to optimize however it monetizes each of this traffic.

And it's gotten precise bully astatine doing precisely that. Except for the 2nd 4th of 2020, erstwhile the COVID-19 pandemic was rattling the world, not 1 4th since 2012 has seen this institution neglect to nutrient year-over-year gross growth. Profit maturation has been astir arsenic reliable.

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