The 27 best-performing stocks in the last 100 years — delivering eye-watering returns up to 265,528,900%

• Nvidia stock has surged 332,000% since its 1999 IPO, leading the past 20 years.
• Despite its growth, Nvidia isn’t among the top-performing stocks of the last century.
• Below, we list the 27 best-performing stocks since 1925, according to Hendrik Bessembinder’s.

Nvidia stock has soared almost 332,000% since the company went public in 1999. As of December 2023, it’s been the best-performing stock of the last 20 years with a 33.38% average annual return, according to Hendrik Bessembinder, a professor at Arizona State University.

Yet, data in a recent paper published by Bessembinder shows it still has a ways to go to sit among the top-performing stocks of the last 100 years.

In the paper, Bessembinder looked at over 29,000 US stocks and compiled a list of the 30 stocks with the highest cumulative returns over the last century, assuming a buy-and-hold strategy and the dividends reinvested.

Interestingly, negative returns were a more common outcome than gains, with 51.6% of stocks being in the red. The median return was -7.41%, but with some stocks having incredible upside, the mean return was 22,840%.

Below, we’ve listed 27 of those 30 top stocks that are still trading today, along with their total cumulative returns, annual compound returns, years since their first return in the study’s timeframe (December 1925-December 2023), and how much each dollar originally invested is worth today, per the data in Bessembinder’s paper. Data is pulled from the Center for Research in Security Prices, he said.

It should be noted that Bessembinder isn’t recommending these stocks as investments. The adage that prior performance does not guarantee future results applies.