If You Invested $20,000 in These Companies 20 Years Ago, You Would Be a Millionaire Now
Making a million dollars is no easy task if you’re starting from scratch. It’s going to take some combination of time, luck and work. Sometimes, though, if you’re starting with some money, you can let time do the work for you through the power of compounding. The easiest way to do that is by investing in stocks. Picking a winner is hard, but if you can do it, you can turn a relatively small investment into millions of dollars over time.
A $20,000 initial investment in any one of these fourteen stocks would have made you a millionaire if you had invested 20 years ago. While many of them are household names, there are also a few companies you may not have heard of before. The next millionaire-making stock may be hiding in plain sight.
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Apple Inc. (AAPL)
Value of investment in 2024: $8.8 million
You wouldn’t know it now, but Apple came perilously close to bankruptcy before the return of Steve Jobs and its ensuing revitalization in the late 1990s. Long-term shareholders have been rewarded handsomely for holding on to this stock over the years.
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NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA)
Value of investment in 2024: $5.8 million
While the company has been successful for a while now, the stock of this chip maker has absolutely blown up over the last few years driven by the hype around artificial intelligence, especially generative AI. Graphic processing units or GPUs, NVIDIA’s specialty, are especially useful in AI applications.
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Monster Beverage Corp. (MNST)
Value of investment in 2024: $4.5 million
Once a humble juice company called Hansen’s, the explosion in energy drinks led the company to rename itself after its most popular offering in 2012. They now preside over a portfolio of brands including Full Throttle, NOS, Burn and Bang Energy.
Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG)
Value of investment in 2024: $3.9 million
Intuitive Surgical may not be a familiar name, but if you work in healthcare you’ve certainly heard of it. Their primary product is the DaVinci robotic surgical system, which uses high levels of precision to assist surgeons in performing less invasive complex surgeries.
Texas Pacific Land Corporation (TPL)
Value of investment in 2024: $3.5 million
Texas Pacific operates in the land and resource management and water services and operations businesses, but put more simply their main business is collecting royalties from their interests in oil and gas producing land.
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Netflix Inc. (NFLX)
Value of investment in 2024: $2.8 million
Another stock that needs no introduction, Netflix was still just mailing DVDs twenty years ago. Early investors in the stock were able to get the full benefit of the streaming media revolution and the financial returns that came along with it.
Booking Holdings Inc. (BKNG)
Value of investment in 2024: $2.7 million
This online travel conglomerate owns a huge portfolio of travel and reservation sites — most notably Booking.com but including Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable. With the vast majority of booking activity moving to the internet over the last 20 years, early investors here have gotten rich and then some.
Clean Harbors Inc. (CLH)
Value of investment in 2024: $2.3 million
Another somewhat obscure stock, Clean Harbors, as the name implies, provides a wide range of waste and material services including collection, handling and disposal. Sometimes the dirtiest jobs also pay the best, as CLH investors have found out.
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Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. (REGN)
Value of investment in 2024: $2.1 million
Regeneron primarily invents and develops disease treatments. Their full portfolio of medications and treatments is too vast to list here — suffice to say that it has developed enough of them to make some serious money, and investors have reaped the benefits.
Deckers Outdoor Corporation (DECK)
Value of investment in 2024: $2.0 million
Deckers sells all manner of footwear under famous brand names like UGG, Teva and Hoka, to name a few. Investing 20 years ago would have gotten you in on the ground floor for the success of these top brands.
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
Value of investment in 2024: $1.5 million
It may feel strange to see Amazon lower on the list, but you had to invest a little earlier to get the full benefit of Amazon’s incredible rise to become the everything store. Even so, anyone that got on the train 20 years ago would still be sitting on over a million dollars today.
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Tyler Technologies Inc. (TYL)
Value of investment in 2024: $1.1 million
Tyler Technologies “provides integrated information management solutions and services for the public sector.” Think Oracle or Salesforce but for government agencies, courthouses and schools instead of businesses. These types of customers tend to stick around, making this a lucrative business segment to operate in.
SBA Communications Corp. (SBAC)
Value of investment in 2024: $1.0 million
SBA is a real estate investment trust (REIT), a type of company that essentially collects rents on owned properties that mostly get passed on to investors in the form of dividends. Because they pay out so much of their income, REITs typically do not see big capital gains — but that doesn’t mean they can’t offer compelling total returns. SBA paid out so much to shareholders that holding SBA for 20 years and reinvesting all dividends would have made you a millionaire today.
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