Top investors like Warren Buffett have repeatedly emphasized that their favorite stocks are those in companies they can hold forever. If you own a high-quality business that consistently creates value, simply watching your wealth accumulate can be extremely beneficial for your retirement savings. At an annualized return of 20%, a $10,000 investment would grow to $25,000 after five years; but if held for 20 years, that same investment would be worth $383,000—a sum that makes a significant difference for retirement.
Based on this philosophy, the following three high-quality, disruptive companies are worth holding for a full 20 years, and investors may consider buying them now.
The most critical factor when seeking a stock to hold for 20 years is the durability of the business. Over the past several decades, few brands in the entertainment space have demonstrated more staying power than Nintendo. This family-friendly, gaming-focused giant continues to develop high-quality content and remains the world’s leading seller of game consoles.
Its recently launched next-generation flagship gaming hardware, the Nintendo Switch 2, has seen explosive sales. In the last fiscal year ending March, the company sold 20 million units of this console, and it is expected to sell a similar number in its second year on the market. Nintendo’s business model involves selling gaming hardware to players at a slim profit margin, then making up the difference by selling high-margin games from its first-party franchises like Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon. The Switch 2 continues this strategy: Mario Kart World has already sold 15 million copies, and a new Pokémon game sold 2.2 million copies in just its first four days on sale.
This business model is expected to remain effective 20 years from now. Due to concerns over memory chips, the stock has fallen 54% from its highs. Nintendo appears to be experiencing short-term pain, but for investors buying now, it promises long-term gains.
No industry has more durability than healthcare. Every person around the world needs some level of health insurance coverage, making the health insurance market a pillar of the U.S. economy. Even if customers dislike their insurer, they still have to pay premiums each year.
Oscar Health is a new type of health insurance provider designed to satisfy its customers. Instead of burying users in tedious paperwork and unclear costs, the company built a cloud-based health insurance platform from the ground up, making it easier for all parties involved to use. Leveraging this technological advantage, Oscar Health challenges traditional players in the individual-payer market through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. By continuously expanding its coverage nationwide, the company wins more individual health insurance customers each year. Last quarter, its paid membership reached 3.2 million, up from just 1 million in the first quarter of 2022.
Customer growth is helping Oscar Health scale up and ultimately achieve profitability. This year, the company expects to generate $19 billion in revenue and $250 million to $450 million in operating profit. Relative to its current $6.8 billion market capitalization, if you believe it can continue capturing market share in health insurance over the coming years, the stock looks quite cheap.
Regardless of how the economy evolves, retailers need to process payments from customers around the world, both online and offline. Adyen believes it has the best payment infrastructure for global enterprises and is consequently gaining market share in payment processing. Its clients include companies with complex processing needs, such as Spotify and Uber, and Adyen provides these clients with best-in-class execution—specifically, the highest possible payment success rate at checkout.
Financial results testify to this superior performance and market share growth. In the first quarter of 2026, Adyen’s processed transaction volume grew 21% year over year, with revenue increasing 20% on a constant currency basis. From 2016 to 2025, as more businesses adopted its checkout terminals for retail payments, its revenue grew more than tenfold.
Currently, Adyen’s stock is trading at a low point, down 66% from its all-time high, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 29 times. Given the vast and durable market opportunity in retail payments, along with the company’s potential to continue gaining market share, Adyen represents an excellent opportunity for investors.
The three stocks mentioned above—Nintendo, Oscar Health, and Adyen—come from three different industries (entertainment, health insurance, and payment processing), yet they all share the core traits of long-term holdings: business durability, the ability to disrupt through technology or business models, and current stock prices that are relatively low due to short-term factors. Although each faces its own market challenges, all have clear growth paths and solid competitive moats. For investors seeking 20-year long-term returns, these three stocks are worthy of observation and portfolio consideration.
