Investing

Just 14 Stocks Have Created 20% of All Stock Market Gains Since 1924

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In what truly is one of the most amazing statistics to ever come across our desks here at 24/7 Wall St., we recently saw a chart that showed that just 14 stocks have created 20% of all stock market gains in dollars since 1924. That is a phenomenal figure, considering the sheer number of companies that have come and gone in that time, and the overall wealth created in the stock market in the past 93 years.

The chart, which was sourced from Bloomberg/Henrik Bessembinder through a Jefferies research piece, contains many companies that have been around for years, but also sports four tech companies, albeit one has been around since 1911.

In a remarkable and striking similarity, all the companies on the list are still incredibly relevant and are still outstanding investment ideas, depending on your risk tolerance.

Here are the 14 stocks that have created 20% of all the stock market gains since 1924. They are listed from the largest to the smallest in term of percentage of wealth creation, and we also included when they were started.

1. Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), as it is known now, was formed on November 30, 1999. Both Exxon and Mobil were descendants of Standard Oil, established by John D. Rockefeller and partners in 1870 as the Standard Oil Company of Ohio.

2. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) was founded April 1, 1976, in Cupertino, California, by Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak.

3. General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) was founded in 1892 through a merger of Edison General Electric Company, Schenectady, and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts. GE had its headquarters in Connecticut, while both the operating plants were based in New York. The founders were Thomas Edison, Charles A. Coffin, Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston.

4. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) started on April 4, 1975, when it was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

5. International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) started as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, the precursor to IBM, and was founded on June 16, 1911. At its beginning, it was a merger of three manufacturing businesses, a product of the times orchestrated by the financier, Charles Flint.

6. Altria Inc. (NYSE: MO) was renamed from the Philip Morris Companies on January 27, 2003. Philip Morris traces the roots of the company back to 1902, when the company was incorporated in New York.

7. General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) was formed on September 16, 1908, in Flint, Michigan, as a holding company controlled by William C. Durant, owner of Buick. They note that this refers to the old GM.

8. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) The three Johnson brothers Robert, James and Edward founded the company in 1886 in New Brunswick, N.J. Their initial focus was on bandages, sterile sutures, wound care and baby products.

9. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) was founded on July 2, 1962, when Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart store in Rogers, Arkansas. The Walton family owned 24 stores, ringing up $12.7 million in sales. The company officially incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores.

10. Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG) was founded when William Procter and James Gamble, emigrated from England and Ireland, respectively. They settled in Cincinnati initially and met when they married sisters, Alexander Norris, their father-in-law, called a meeting in which he persuaded his new sons-in-law to become business partners. On October 31, 1837, as a result of the suggestion, Procter & Gamble was created.

11. Chevron Inc. (NYSE: CVX) was another one of the successor companies of Standard Oil. The company’s earliest predecessor, Pacific Coast Oil Co., was incorporated in 1879 in San Francisco.

12. Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) was founded in January 29, 1892, in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the earliest big name investors was none other than baseball legend Ty Cobb.

13. AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) was once the Bell Telephone Company, established in 1879 by Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. Bell also established American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885, which acquired the Bell Telephone Company and became the primary phone company in the United States. This company maintained a monopoly on telephone service in the United States until anti-trust regulators split the company in 1982.

14. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos and is based in Seattle, Washington.

There you have it, an amazing collection of the old and the new, all of which were instrumental in bringing titanic change to the world through their products and innovations. An incredible group of 14 companies, they have over the years metamorphosed through various changes and incarnations and provided an astonishing 20% of all the stock market wealth that has been generated since 1924.

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