If I Were in My 20s, I’d Buy These 2 Trillion-Dollar Stocks and Hold Them Until Retirement
Investing in an S&P 500 index fund is a proven way to build wealth in the stock market over the long term. But for young investors in their 20s, enduring a little more volatility for an opportunity to earn higher returns could be a worthwhile trade-off, so they might prefer to build a portfolio of around 50 individual stocks instead.
While the S&P 500 has delivered a compound annual return of 10.7% since its inception in 1957, shares of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) have delivered significantly higher returns since they went public:
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Amazon stock has surged by 349,326% since its initial public offering (IPO) in 1997, translating to a compound annual return of 32%.
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Meta stock has soared by 1,371% since its IPO in 2012, translating to a compound annual return of 21%.
Past performance isn’t always a good indicator of future results, but here’s why I think those two stocks could be great additions to a diversified portfolio for young investors in their 20s who want a financially secure retirement.
The first stock to buy: Amazon
Amazon was just three years old when it went public in 1997. It initially focused on selling books and other products over the internet, but it has since expanded into cloud computing, digital advertising, streaming, and more. It has amassed a market capitalization of $2.8 trillion, making it the world’s fifth-largest company.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the company’s cloud computing division. It offers hundreds of tools to help businesses thrive in the digital age, but it’s also at the center of Amazon’s artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions because it develops advanced data center chips, large language models (LLMs), and various software applications. Businesses pay AWS a substantial amount of money to use these products and services, because developing them internally is often prohibitively expensive.
AWS accounted for just $79.8 billion of Amazon’s $382.1 billion in total revenue during the first half of 2026, but it was responsible for more than half of the company’s operating income. In other words, while e-commerce still brings in more revenue than any of Amazon’s other businesses, AWS is the most profitable by far.
Amazon is also gradually integrating AI into its other businesses, which could improve their growth and profitability over time. Plus, it has acquired an equity stake in AI powerhouse Anthropic, which yielded almost $70 billion in paper profits in the first half of this year alone.
