Ten-Baggers

In my previous post I mentioned a bunch of individual stocks that I am now following, in addition to the few I've already mentioned, but it occurred to me on my walk yesterday that I should probably clarify that these are being traded in my 'play' account which comprises less than 10% of my investment portfolio. 

The majority of my money is invested in low-cost index tracking funds, and while it would be nice to beat the market with individual stocks, I'm probably not going to be able to over the long-term.

Last year this account was up 26.5% so I did slightly beat the benchmark S&P 500 index (+23.3%), but only with the help of a late surge from Tesla and a late decline for the S&P 500. 

My financial advisor made clear to me, this (choosing $TSLA, not beating the market) was likely a once in a lifetime event, but I'm not sure about that. 

While Tesla became a ten-bagger in a couple of years, there are several other companies who have met the definition.

"eToro analysed the returns of FTSE 350 companies and S&P 500 firms from 2013 to 2023 to identify ten-bagger stocks i.e. companies which have seen their share price surge by a factor of 10 or more (+1,000%) over 10 years."

Your chances are improved by looking to the US markets with just two UK companies (JD Sports (JD) and Games Workshop (GAW) achieving this, a strike rate of 0.6%.

Over in the US, 21 of the current S&P 500 made +1,000% returns from 2013 to 2023, a 4.2% hit rate. This list includes Tesla and the article concludes with the sensible advice that:

It’s also worth bearing in mind that even if you don’t directly invest in these winning companies, you can still benefit from their success by investing in Exchange Traded Funds tracking the performance of particular stock markets as a whole.