$100 a month for 30 years: $1.76 million in five stocks, $240,728 in the S&P 500 and $56,916 in bonds

In October 1996, three investors each decide to set aside $100 a month for 30 years. The first splits it evenly across five stocks from five sectors — Old Dominion Freight Line (trucking), Amphenol (electronic connectors), O’Reilly Automotive (auto parts), ResMed (sleep apnea devices) and Arthur J. Gallagher (insurance brokerage) — $20 a month in each. The second puts the $100 into the S&P 500 through the SPY ETF. The third keeps it in U.S. fixed income: a Vanguard bond fund (VBMFX) or 3-month Treasury bills. Each buys at the last close of every month from October 1996 to September 2026: 360 contributions, $36,000 each. Dividends and interest are reinvested.

The five-stock investor ended with 7.3 times as much as the S&P 500 investor. The stock portfolio was behind the index at only three month-ends — November 1996, April 1997 and April 1999 — and has been ahead since May 1999. It was never worth less than the money put in.

The years the index lost to bonds

The S&P 500 investor had a harder ride. After the dot-com crash, at the end of 2002, the $7,500 contributed was worth $6,346 in the index, against $9,518 in the bond fund and $14,725 in the five stocks. In February 2009, at the bottom of the financial crisis, the index holding was worth $10,895 for $14,900 contributed, while the bond fund held $20,696. The index investor was below the money put in at 29 month-ends, the last in July 2009, and below the bond fund at 127, the last in February 2013. Since then the index has pulled far ahead. The fixed-income investor never lost much — the Treasury bills never fell — but ended with 1.4 to 1.6 times the money contributed.

Each of the five

Even the weakest of the five, Arthur J. Gallagher, turned $20 a month into $118,219. O’Reilly has never paid a dividend, so all of its result came from the share price. The others started paying later in the period — Amphenol in 2005, ResMed in 2012 and Old Dominion in 2017 — except Gallagher, which paid throughout. None of the four dividend payers cut its regular dividend. Without reinvesting any dividends, the five-stock portfolio would be worth $1,634,811.

The latest quarter

All five reported results in the last week of October 2026. Old Dominion’s third-quarter revenue rose 13.1% to $1.59 billion. Amphenol reported sales of $10.2 billion, up 65%, and raised its dividend. O’Reilly’s comparable-store sales grew 7.2% and its diluted earnings per share rose 14% to $0.97. ResMed’s revenue for its fiscal first quarter rose 6% to $1.4 billion, and Gallagher’s brokerage revenue rose to $3.47 billion from $2.92 billion.

How these five were chosen

This is hindsight. The five were picked on November 1, 2026, from the 257 companies worth at least $20 billion that reported results between October 8 and 31, 2026. Of the 144 of those with share prices going back to 1996, 84 beat the S&P 500 on their own with the same $100 a month, and these five were among those that beat it by the most and for the longest. The list leaves out every company that went bankrupt or shrank, so it starts with the winners. An investor in 1996 could not have known which five to buy.

One adjustment, checked against SEC filings: in 1997 Amphenol was recapitalized by KKR, and its 10-K for 1996 says “approximately 90% of the Company’s Class A common stock will be converted into $26.00 in cash.” The calculation assumes the cash was reinvested in the same stock, which kept trading at $26 to $28 afterward. Amphenol’s contributions before the deal ($140) are worth about $70,000 today; leaving that cash out would lower the five-stock result to about $1.69 million, still seven times the index.

Stock and fund values use Yahoo Finance closing prices with dividends reinvested at the close of each ex-dividend date; Treasury bills use the monthly 3-month rate from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). The figures are before taxes and trading costs. This is a description of what happened, not a forecast and not investment advice.