10 Years Later: 5 Low-Risk Stocks for the Next Year

In this episode of Motley Fool Rule Breaker Investing, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner selected stocks to beat the market in the coming year. Their common denominator? Each ranked among the lowest-risk companies in Gardner's investing universe.

Now, 10 years later, Gardner and Motley Fool analyst Rick Munarriz reivew how Apple, Canadian National Railway, Disney, Ecolab, and Alphabet fared one year after selection and 10 years later. They discover:

• Which delivered?
• Which disappointed?
• And what does a decade teach us about what "low risk" really means?

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Sept. 9, 2026.

David Gardner: Ten years ago, Sept. 7, 2016. Do you remember what you were doing that day? We did something we'd never done before and would never do again among our 30 five-stock samplers. We picked five stocks specifically for the next year. There was plenty of bearishness around at the time, so I went looking among the very lowest risk companies in my universe for five safer bets to beat the market. One was a railroad. Another was a company whose stock had somehow underperformed the market over the previous five years, despite having one of the world's great brands. The other three, well, we'll get there. Though the picks were made for that year ahead, neither with this sampler nor any of the other 29 did we say or think you should sell at contests. On the contrary, all 150 stocks across my 30 five-stock samplers were already Motley Fool recommendations, and in most cases, we continued holding them well beyond the sampler's finish line.

Today, we fire up the time machine 10 years later, and my Rule Breaker sidekick, Rick Munarriz, returns with the numbers, the stories, and the surprises. Did low risk, so-called, actually mean low risk? Did these five beat the market in the year they were picked to do so? What happened when we simply let another nine years roll by? Five low-risk stocks for the next year, 10 years later, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Every 10 weeks, we open a time capsule, a past five-stock sampler hitting its 10-year birthday. We score each pick equal-weighted from the original air date, see its return, and compare it to the S&P 500 over the same span. Then we do the real work, what we got right, what we got wrong, and what we may have been missing. Well, actually, I have on a Motley Fool friend to help do the real work, and this week it's longtime Fool Rick Munarriz, back to join me and discuss together what the decade actually taught us as investors. We'll finish with the sampler's overall result and whatever key lessons and go-forward views we may want to share out to you. If you're new here, that's 10 years later. We're not just keeping score, we're learning how and why Rule Breakers win, and sometimes lose, too.

On a side note, before we get started, I want to mention I have, for the next five weeks, this one included, grand jury duty in Washington, DC. Thus, if you're a baseball fan, my Cal Ripken streak of a brand-new podcast every week, now in its 12th year, is severely threatened by the prospect of going 9:00-5:00 downtown Washington, DC, to the courthouse day after day. I'll be trying to record all of my podcasts at night, this one included.

Rick Munarriz has been part of The Motley Fool since 1995 as contributing Rule Breaker writer, analyst, and cheerleader. When not breaking down stocks, Rick is breaking down scenes as part of the management team for Just the Funny, Miami's oldest improv comedy theater. Rick, welcome back.

Rick Munarriz: Thank you. I feel grand. Not grand jury grand, but grand. Just grand.

David Gardner: Do you remember what you were doing this week in 2016?

Rick Munarriz: I sure don't. I probably felt younger. But I know it was not a good time as the climate for investing. It was definitely a time to put out a sampler of low-risk stocks, which is exactly what you did.

David Gardner: Well, thank you. There were some surprising volatility and drops in 2016, that second half. The key to the sampler, Rick, as you just foreshadowed, was low risk. Even back then, we were using our risk ratings that, Rick, you and I have worked on and published over the years here and there, my 25-point risk rating system. Most recently, by the way, I brought that back on February 7th of this year. On this podcast, we ran both Etsy and Duolingo through the 25-point risk rating system to demonstrate that for listeners old and new. If you're new and you'd like to hear how that 25-point risk rating system works, which you can run on any stock in your portfolio, just listen back to February 7th of this year. But back on Sept. 7, 2016, that is what we were using to search out our lowest risk Rule Breaker stocks. People were getting really bearish in the second half of 2016, and now looking backward, Rick, and knowing how the market performed, it's pleasing to note that the stock market was actually up over that following year.

We'll talk about overall performance in a bit, but before we get started, I should mention how the market has done since that day 10 years ago this week to now. This is pretty impressive because the stock market has more than tripled over these 10 years. The bogey, what we'll be shooting for, the performance of SPY, that would be the S&P 500 ETF, is plus 251.7%. Two hundred fifty-two, that's what these five stocks are competing against. The stocks Rick and I are going to go over are Apple, Canadian National Railway, Walt Disney, Ecolab, and Alphabet, Google. We're going back in time this week into our Rule Breaker Investing time machine. Rick, let's you and I strap in. Conductor, please send us into the past 10 years ago this exact week.

Stock No. 1, Apple, ticker symbol AAPL. Apple in September 2016 was in the unusual position of being one of the world's great companies, and a decidedly unimpressive stock. It had underperformed the S&P 500 over the previous 1, 2, and 5 years. The iPhone 7 was arriving amid headlines that Apple's product launches weren't cool anymore. Questions swirled around the Apple Watch, and yet here sat this immensely profitable company stuffed with cash, possessing one of the world's great brands and products that I won't speak for you, Rick, but I and an awful lot of other people loved. Well, why I picked the stock, I was attracted partly because expectations had just become so subdued. I was saying something like, "I'm looking backward and seeing underperformance, and yet I'm seeing one of the best brands in the world." That negative chatter around Apple actually made me a little bit bullish. Rick, your thoughts about Apple either then or now?

Rick Munarriz: Apple, just basically over the last 10 years. Back then, they were on the iPhone 7. That's how long 10 years ago is. That's how long it's been. As you mentioned earlier, it had underperformed the market. But specifically to Apple, it managed to somehow successfully go from one of the greatest, if not the greatest, innovator in consumer tech in Steve Jobs to a new CEO with a penchant for improving its operations. Very different CEOs, and these are the kind of relay races that when you get different running styles, the baton usually doesn't get handed off well, but it worked perfectly here. Steve Jobs and then Tim Cook were the right CEO at the right time for Apple, and it paid off for Apple.

David Gardner: It did, and I'll do the performance in a sec, but it is somewhat ironic that Tim Cook has just retired within the last couple of weeks. Here we are 10 years later. Of course, he was there more than 10 years, but that transition, that baton pass, Rick, as you say, was spectacular. It's a reminder it's not always about the founder. You can find some great operators. In the case of Cook, he stacked on more market cap gross value than Steve Jobs did. It's also fun, Rick, as you pointed out, to think about how the iPhone 17 is the phone these days, and it is in fact plus 10 over the iPhone 7. Apple hasn't skipped a beat, another new iPhone every year. The stock 10 years ago this week, $27.09. The stock as of Friday's market close, of course, the 7th this week was a holiday, it closed at $319.97. Apple, an 11-bagger, up 1,081% versus the market's 252%. Rick, quick schoolboy math says that's plus 829 Alpha here for stock No. 1. Rick Munarriz, what would you say is the single biggest reason the stock did what it did?

Rick Munarriz: Two words, Tim Cook. Again, now just last week, obviously, John Ternus became the next CEO. When you succeed 15 years at a company, you obviously did a pretty good job. But again, when he got there, and again, this was a company built on innovation, and that wasn't his forte. That was Jobs' forte. Jobs had the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. Cook had the, "I want to make things better," and left it at that. Jobs equals dreamer. Cook equals executioner, and I mean that in a good way, not in a grand jury way. He made sure that Apple was executing, and as far as improving its operations, its gross margins have been increasing for seven fiscal years. This will be the seventh fiscal year in a row where gross margin expands.

Yes, Cook wasn't completely devoid of innovation. You had the Apple Watch that came out just before this 10-year cycle started that we're in, but it happened under Cook. You had the AirPods, the Apple Wallet, Apple TV+. But again, he was more of a renovator than an innovator, if I can say that. But to me, Apple became this great, efficient company that was able to become not just a product company, as it was under Jobs, but a services company, and also one that would just keep building on things and making the experiences even better for users and making it stickier and the engagement even better. Clearly, Cook did a great job, and without him, I don't think under a lesser CEO, we obviously would not have gotten even close to this. Even a Jobs-like CEO could've backfired on Apple.

David Gardner: That's really a compelling thought, Rick, and it makes me look ahead then a little bit to Ternus. I haven't followed this transition. I'm not necessarily keeping up at the high levels with Apple right now, although I'm awfully glad it's in my portfolio. But do you want to foreshadow anything about this next chapter for Apple?

Rick Munarriz: I think we're getting an innovator again. Again, I don't know a lot about Ternus specifically, but his first post on X was "Hello," and people were complaining, "Oh, he gave us five letters, that's it." But to me, I'm like, no, he's introducing himself like a new iPhone. When you get that iPhone, it just says "Hello," and it's just introducing, "Hey, this is going to be new. This is going to be different." Again, we're recording this the day before they have another presentation, so there is a chance we may get a foldable iPhone. But again, I expect more innovation to happen in the years to come. But I definitely think the operations are set. I don't think John Ternus should affect that at all, should impact that. He knows that's working. Let's see some of the creativity go back into Apple. I'd like to see that, and that's what I hope we get out of the new CEO. But again, Jobs, Cook, it could be a hard act to follow who was a hard act to follow for the new CEO.

David Gardner: Really well said, and I guess before we move to Stock No. 2, it's worth just pointing out that Apple was already pretty massive 10 years ago. I think a lot of people would've said they missed Apple at that point. It was on the iPhone 7, etc. The stock had been underperforming, and yet here it is, an 11-bagger. It's a reminder to me as a Rule Breaker that you should never think with great companies you've missed it. I think people have thought they missed Amazon 30 years ago, 25 years ago, 20 years ago, the list goes on, and this is another such company. A quick thought for Rule Breaker investors when it comes to approaching truly great companies, I don't think there's ever a bad time to buy and just keep adding and holding over time.

Now, I wish that were true, Rick, of Stock No. 2. It has not been. Stock No. 2 is Canadian National Railway. The ticker symbol is CNI. A railroad, boring, but as I said 10 years ago, timeless too. Canadian National had been around roughly a century, moving stuff cheaply and efficiently through Canada and into the United States. I'd recommended it in Stock Advisor in 2008. Eight years later, 10 years ago, the stock had roughly tripled while the market had doubled, which felt pretty good to me at the time. But business had hit a rough patch. I remember coal shipments were down sharply. Other freight categories were soft, and here was a big thing, too. The longtime CEO of the company, and COO, chief operating officer, and CFO, financial officer, had all retired that summer. We have a venerable railroad suddenly undergoing a changing of the guard.

Why did I pick the stock? Well, the underlying service, transportation, wasn't going anywhere, and the incoming leaders had grown up inside the company itself, those aforementioned new leaders, and that's the way I like my transitions to happen. What you just said about Tim Cook, Rick. I also want to mention there was a roughly 1.7% dividend yield, so it had a very low risk rating that paid a dividend. I did provide one final, highly technical insight in that podcast 10 years ago. I think I said, "I like railroads," and I thought Canadian Natty could beat the market over the coming year. Rick, your top-of-mind reaction when you hear the phrase Canadian National Railway.

Rick Munarriz: Top of mind, I think that this is a company that, again, especially looking at the last 10 years, it's a tale of two halves. In the first five years, we're solid on the returns-wise. But then, obviously, COVID, and then trying to be a homewrecker into an acquisition that was happening as the third wheel did not play well for the company, so Canadian National Railways suffered, went off the rails, so to speak.

David Gardner: Do you like railroads?

Rick Munarriz: I like trains. Is that just like the "I like turtles" thing? Can we go viral with these things? Yeah, I love trains. Trains are great.

David Gardner: Well, the stock market liked trains, but didn't love trains. Ten years ago this week, Canadian National was at $65.05. Today, $123.37. Up 90%. Doesn't sound bad until you're reminded the stock market averages are up 252% over these 10 years. So Canadian National, 162 points behind the market averages. Rick, in your mind, I think you just called it out, tale of two halves. Maybe you can go deeper here. What is the single biggest reason that Canadian National has underperformed?

Rick Munarriz: Again, this goes almost for the whole railroad industry, the whole railway industry. The first few years, basically in 2016, it was a great time to like the stock. CNI and other railroad companies were benefiting from several factors. They were able to raise prices. There was cost-cutting efforts. Trains were getting longer. Again, these are cargo trains. It's not the trains that you and I can ride and go to the conductor. But it was conducive to everything that was happening. There was better asset utilization, and they were getting better technology-wise to make sure everything was happening. They were buying back their stock. Everything was going really well for the first five years. It gets the first four years. Then the pandemic happened. Initially, the pandemic was a mixed blessing for them because, again, when the pandemic happened, there were supply chain disruptions to actually get truckers to go around was hard to find.

That issue was a commodity. There was demand people needed things to be shipped around, especially when people were staying at home. There was all these factors that gave them little pricing power. But then it all started to fall apart, almost like revenge travel when people really wanted to go out and travel coming out of the pandemic. Then it reversed. The same thing happened to the railway industry. In this case, all the benefits that they had a pricing power and all that went away. The trucking industry bounced back. The supply chain disruptions fixed themselves. There wasn't this whole thing, we need to get this on a train. We'll pay whatever you need to ship. We saw this also with boats with the maritime shipment. It was a reversal of it. But specifically to them, I think we can't end this discussion without talking about the Kansas City Southern flirtation. Let's call it.

Another company, Canadian Pacific Railway, no relation except for Canada. They're both based out of Canada, made an offer to buy Kansas City Southern. Canadian National Railway said, I could do better. They came in, and they came in with a substantially higher offer. But again, it started a bidding war, but eventually, even though they had the better offer, there were antitrust regulatory things that got in the way. Then CNI, Canadian National, said, you can have it Canadian Pacific. Canadian Pacific actually had to pay a higher price than it was going to initially because of this oil disruption. The worst thing for Canadian National Railway, which is our stock, was that it just lost momentum after that. Once it was heartbroken, you love, and you lose, it really did struggle. Then that came right after that was 2023, when its actual revenue declined. This is a company that is a pretty steady grower. Revenue declined in 2020 because of the pandemic. It was lower volume, even though it was making more per shipment.

In 2016, when you recommended the stock because it was out of favor at the time. Then 2023 was the other year that went negative. You did have a situation things just weren't going its way. Then, just trying to spice things up by saying, if I buy this company and get more of a presence in the U.S. market, which they already had, they would be able to do more, and just falling apart was just a reputational hit for the company. It has struggled to get back. The stock has had a pretty good year so far 2026, but the last four years before that were dreadful negative return.

David Gardner: Reminder that Motley Fool Stock Advisor, our original cost is back from 2008. It's been a pretty good 18-year investment overall, and I continue to like railroads. I'm glad it's doing better this year, Rick, and I like them going forward. I will say, also, though, before we move on to stock number 3, that when you're in an oligopoly situation, when an industry is dominated by just a few players, it makes additional acquisitions increasingly dicey with the regulators, and it creates additional complexity and unpredictability, I think. When you have a big, wide-open, rampant industry like AI might be today, making acquisitions is usually a lot faster and easier. There's no real big dog, although maybe I shouldn't give AI as an example today because there are some very big dogs there, but I hope you get the overall point. Acquisitions become more complex to justify to regulators when there are only a few companies still playing. Something else to think about. Rick, thank you for that analysis.

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David Gardner: You may like railroads, Rick Munarriz, but I know you love the next company we're going to talk about. Now, neither of us, I'm sorry to say, is gonna love the performance of the stock, but of all the people I know in the world, I think my friend Rick may know Disney the best. Stock No. 3, ticker symbol DIS, the Walt Disney Company. Do I need to say anything more? It's Disney. By September 2016, this company had already bought Marvel, had already bought Lucasfilm, and The Force Awakens had become the biggest domestic box office draw ever. Anyone who hadn't bought the stock could maybe understandably feel maybe a little late.

But I didn't. My attention was on December's release of Rogue One, which was the first Star Wars film stepping outside the main Saga. Reports of rewrites and reshoots had created uncertainty. Disney had already produced at least $4,900 million plus movies that year. Why did I pick it? 10 years ago this week, I saw Rogue One as potentially doing for Star Wars what Marvel had demonstrated with superheroes. Could it maybe turn a Universe into an expandable collection of interconnected stories? I remember saying on the podcast, it feels like a new superhero to me. If Disney could make audiences care about characters beyond this central stage, I thought it opens the possibility to more and more of this universe hitting television and movie screens, and Rick will talk about whether that happened or not in a second, where the stock is. But any top-of-mind reaction here to Disney, either then or now.

Rick Munarriz: Again, looking at Disney, and you're absolutely right. Again, this is a kept stock that's really not gone anywhere. Unfortunately, over the last 10 years, but the one thing that has gone, it had four CEO tenures in these last 10 years. It had Bob Iger. Then Bob Chapek took over February 2020, right when the COVID-19 crisis started to hit. Bob Iger came back two years later, and now Josh DeMarco became the new CEO this year. When you have four CEOs, I know it's three CEOs, but I'm calling it four CEO tenures because Bob Iger he gets a mulligan. He gets to come back a second time. Usually does not work out well for investors when you have a spinal tap drummer rotation in your CEO office, so to speak.

David Gardner: The 10-year performance of the stock. Ten years ago this week, Disney was at $93.71. Last Friday, it closed at $105.31. That would be up 12%. Now up, but 12%, the market up 252%. Rick, maybe explain what happened here. Let's pretend we're talking to a smart 25-year-old, maybe somebody who's not gone to business school but has ridden a Disney ride or two. What would you say?

Rick Munarriz: If you've been at Disneyland, if you've been on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, I think that would be the ride that you could describe Disney in the last 10 years. To be fair, in Disney's defense, if you look at the production, if you think, what makes a good entertainment company? Disney checks off all those boxes. You need big blockbuster movies. Last year, in 2025, they had the only three U.S. movies that made $1 billion each worldwide. The year before that, same thing. They had the only three movies that topped $1 billion. This year, a little different. They have Toy Story 5, and then obviously, there's Odyssey and a lot of the movies. Spider-Man, which is the highest-grossing movie worldwide, the only one that's topped $2 billion this year, is their property, so they're making money off it, but it's a Sony release, so they're not really the studio behind it. But so theatrically, they're doing fine. On the legacy media side, which is always the one big thing, people are cutting the cord. They're doing OK because Disney+ turned profitable two years ago, and now the revenue and operating profit from Disney+ and Hulu and their other streaming business are offsetting the legacy network business. It's not a total loss.

Then you get to the theme parks and the theme parks, they're doing better now than ever, not as far as turnstile clicks. There's still fewer people going than the year before the pandemic. But because Disney's gotten better about increasing the experience and the upcharges and all the other things they can do, which is not necessarily a good thing, as far as people saying it's even more expensive now to go to Disney World, they have never been as profitable or generating the same revenue at their theme parks that they have. They're doing all these things right, and you're in a climate where at least two media companies got bought out at very big prices. One of them is still in the process of going through the regulatory channels.

But they've been forgotten, and partly is because it's been a slow-growth company. Again, when you really don't have a CEO, that's just there. Even when Iger came back, I'm only going to be in a couple of years. Investors knew it was not going to be a permanent thing. It was hard to get excited about the situation, even though Disney's now trading for a forward P/E in the teens, which you really don't see that with Disney very often. But there's a premium that Disney normally command is just not there right now, despite the fact that, at least in my eyes, I think the company is doing quite well.

David Gardner: I do, too. I'm just astounded, Rick, that it has underperformed by this degree. Of these five companies, this is by far the company that has underperformed the most. This is an iconic brand. This is a beloved company. It provides a wide variety of experiences. I'm going to just ask you to dig even one dig deeper. I don't know what you're going to find, Rick, but how could this company be essentially flat 10 years later?

Rick Munarriz: Again, so I think the valuation premium that Disney had 10 years ago was just it. I think it's not that the company's failing in any regard, except if you wanted stronger growth. But again, it's not this dynamic company, but it's still the ecosystem still there. The flywheels still vibrant, and it still spins off hits that it becomes theme park properties and everything. It's hard for me to explain. I can give you a bearish case for Disney, but it's not what I would feel in my heart, which would be weird. But investors just do not care for Disney the investment right now at a time when content is king, as far as based on certain media buyouts that have happened lately.

David Gardner: It's fun to note, going back to stock No. 1, Apple, that it had been an underperformer for the 1-, 2-, and 5-year periods before I picked it this week 10 years ago and went on to become an 11-bagger. Sometimes it's easy to see things in the rear-view mirror. It's harder to look out the windshield and foresee where we're headed. But I think you and I, Rick, probably feel more bullish than not right now about where Disney is as a company and where its stock is and where things could over the next 10 years.

We've done three stocks, and one of them crushed the market. But then we've been giving back Alpha with Canadian National Railway and The Walt Disney Company. I regret to say, we're going to do that one more time here with stock number 4, Ecolab, ticker symbol ECL. Ecolab was the lesser-known company of these five. It was one of my newest stock advisor recommendations. Now, Ecolab was actually born in 1923. Economics Laboratory was the original name of the company. Its first innovation let hotels clean rugs without hauling them away. It sounds like a vacuum cleaner. Anyway, it had grown into a $30 billion-plus global company helping clean restaurants and hospitals, workplaces, industrial sites. I even remembered spotting the Ecolab brand while visiting Australia that summer. The wrinkle in 2016 was its exposure to oil and gas, including fracking, an industry that had spent the previous couple of years under siege.

Why did I pick Ecolab stock 10 years ago this week? That oil and gas weakness was precisely part of the opportunity. I liked Ecolab right then for a bounce back. Also, of course, it had a very safe risk rating, which was the main theme of this sampler. Its businesses extended far beyond energy, though. The larger mission appealed to me because I love companies that help clean up our world. One other fun fact, at the time, Bill Gates owned about 11% through his investment vehicle, and I liked having him along for the ride. Rick Munarriz, Ecolab not as well known as Disney. How is Ecolab known to you?

Rick Munarriz: Again, it's a company that I know personally, just because the model has changed. I think that's the whole thing, as far as it's still very Ecolab, very clean, set, but their model has changed. The five businesses that we're profiling here and it's an honor to be here to do that here with you, David. It has the biggest transformation in these last 10 years. I know the company you liked for its low-risk profile 10 years ago. Oil and gas isn't even a factor now. But I guess we'll get there. But the only problem is it's not growing faster yet, but that could change in the next few years based on some of the things that the company's doing right now.

David Gardner: Good. Again, thank you for this research. All the research you're providing us this week, Rick, and I'm looking forward to understanding a little bit more about Ecolab. I haven't really been keeping up as much with this one. Happy to say it's done better than Disney? I would even add it's done better than Canadian National Railways. Ten years ago this week, it was at $122.74. Today, it's at $279.28. Sounds pretty good to me, up 128%. Yet, that puts a 124 percentage points behind the market average. I'm sad to say a triple-digit Alpha loser over these 10 years. Rick, what does a 10-year scorecard teach us here that maybe that one year when I first picked this sampler couldn't have?

Rick Munarriz: I think the one year did not get the full evolution, which is what's happening here. This transformation. Even at that time, while it was the oil and gas that may have attracted to it, it had already started to pivot away from that. It actually fully happened. It completely sold out just a few years later. It's energy upstream business. I sold it off, and by then, the sampler had already come out, and the one year had come out. But then we get to what they're doing since then. Now it's largely a water, hygiene, and infection-protection solutions provider. That's what the first three things on its website are. Water was always a big part of it because you need water to be clean. Hygiene, of course, it's always been about keeping hotels clean, hospitals clean, food places clean. But it's made some pretty big acquisitions that move it into some more exciting areas of growth for you and I as a growth investor, and anyone listening.

Five years ago, it bought a Life Science and solutions company, and then last year it bought a producer extremely pure water to help fabs with manufacturing of semiconductors. Then this summer, it bought a company specializing in cooling systems for data centers. This is a company that went from very predictably dodgy businesses to cleaning hotel rugs 103 years ago, as you talked about. It's a low-key AI infrastructure play today. The only thing is that revenue growth right now still remains slow. It's still in the low single digits, but it's a higher margin business now. Prospects for growth are a lot stronger. I think the real exciting thing about it is when the Cuppy is talking about their high-tech business, and this is what we're talking about the business they acquired. Obviously there's going to be a non-organic bump when you acquire a company versus when you didn't have it before.

But they expect this business to be from a $1.5 billion a year business this year to four billion by 2030. That's a pretty big deal for a company right now with trailing revenue of just under 17 billion. It is going to start moving the needle. Right now, it's just not really doing much right now, even though that part of the business is definitely growing.

David Gardner: That's really interesting. I had not realized the extent to which this company has changed. Turning the proverbial aircraft carrier is never going to be easy, especially if you're really big like Apple or Disney. But Ecolab has been trying something with a high degree of difficulty. I continue to love, by the way, businesses that clean up our world. It just makes me feel great being an investor. Feel even better, of course, when I beat the market, and that's my main goal, selecting companies that will.

I was checking, Rick, Waste Management, another one of those companies that helps clean up our wish I'd picked that 10 years ago. Waste management is up 240%, almost right in line with that market, but about double the performance of Ecolab. But Waste Management, ticker symbol W-M has been doing more same or compared with what Ecolab has been attempting. Rick, is this a company you put in your portfolio today thinking, hey, I think this thing could beat the market over the next five years or not?

Rick Munarriz: I think Ecolab. I think it can at this point. Largely because, again, it hasn't really fully appreciated the fact that it's moved into all these growth businesses because it's not showing just yet. But the ingredients are in place. The company's already projected very ambitious growth goals for this high growth part of the business. If margins continue to increase, it could definitely be a market beater from this point.

Again, I think it'll still be a relatively conservative play because even if data centers don't build out the way that data center investors would like.

David Gardner: I've read some headlines.

Rick Munarriz: Yes, you have many ways for them to come around and say, hey, you still need your water controlled. You still need pure water to get food prep. You still need all these other things, so they still have all that business. You do need, again, just not even the data center side, which is their latest acquisition. Semiconductors still have to be built, and to make that happen, you need pure water. You need a lot of conditions that Ecolab is right there providing right now.

David Gardner: Thank you for that. That takes us then to stock number five. It's worth pointing out again, Apple spotted us 829 points of Alpha. The subsequent three stocks, were bleeding 100 and 200 points of Alpha as we went. How did number five do? Alpha bed, whose ticker symbol, by the way, is still G-O-O-G or G-O-O-G-L, if you like. Alphabet was last on my what I guess I'd call my Motley alphabetical list of these five companies because, of course, I was doing it by ticker symbol 10 years ago, and G-O-O-G comes last.

The Google to Alphabet reorganization, though. Ten years ago, still relatively fresh. I remember I was consciously training myself to say, Alphabet, unless I specifically met the search engine, and why would that be the case? Even in 2016, this company was much more than just search. YouTube, if you've ever heard of that, dear listener, autonomous cars, Waymo, efforts to extend human life, many other an assortment of other ambitious bets. Some of those would fail, of course, and really, that was part of the point. That's how I think as a Rule Breaker. Why did I pick this stock 10 years ago for this sampler?

Well, first of all, it looked like a very safe overall business, cash rich and massive. I just really love the sheer range of experimentation. When you buy stock in Alphabet, you're truly buying part of the future of the human race. I said, and I added you're buying into a company here that knows how to innovate. That to me, is the hardest thing to do in business. I liked me some Alphabet back then, Rick. We liked it about 10 years before that, by the way. Here we are 20 years after our initial pick. I'm still really liking Alphabet. Your thoughts.

Rick Munarriz: Obviously, I still like Alphabet, too. Again, to me, if you look at what's happened in the last 10 years, when you recommended it in the sample, when you put it on that list of low-risk stocks, if you look at the reports from 2016, this is a company where stuff like Paid clicks was mentioned several times in its filings and its quarterly reports. They don't talk about that anymore. They still talk about traffic acquisition costs and other bets in quotes and stuff. But again, the business has changed. Back then, it was purely an advertising digital advertising was about 85, 90% of the revenue sometimes. These days, while advertising is still a big part of business, it's about two-thirds of the business, subscriptions, Cloud hosting, and all the other projects, stuff like Waymo that back then was pie in the sky. Now, I'm in South Miami right now. There's probably three Waymo's parked within two blocks of me, waiting to pick people up down here. It is, reality is here.

Again, Alphabet has diversified its business, and I think that's played out a good way so that it's not just resting on just one thing, and that is the digital advertising market, which would be far more volatile than what it has now.

David Gardner: Rick, have you ridden in a Waymo?

Rick Munarriz: I have not. I have Waymo, and I have Tesla Robotaxi. They both here in Miami. Literally, Waymo loves where I am right now because I guess there's a lot of restaurants, and it's like I'm right at the end of the residential area leads into the area, so they're just there ready for stuff. I've been wanting to do it. I have complete faith. I have my Tesla, drives itself, so I'm not scared of it. I'm excited to not be behind the wheel and see what happens. But I have yet to ride the Waymo. Have you?

David Gardner: I have not. But I'm certainly interested in it. I also have a Tesla that, yes, drives itself. I'll also say, and maybe I'm not the only one on this podcast who feels this way, Rick, but I enjoy driving. I'm not necessarily looking for my car to drive me everywhere. I really enjoy going from point A to point B. Don't tell anyone else, especially law enforcement, but I think I get there faster when I drive myself from point A to point B. But all arguments against humans driving notwithstanding, it's nice to have a choice these days, and certainly having Waymo especially for older or much younger people, being able to be driven somewhere so much cheaper. What a great answer for our world? The stock 10 years ago was at $39.02. Today it's at $335.31. Quick math, 759% is the gain. It's an eight-bagger, and the market up, as I've already mentioned, 252%. 500 plus Alpha for our pick again, 10 years ago this week of Alphabet. I should point out, Rick, that Alphabet stock did a 20 for one stock split in July 2022. I think it's also paying a dividend these days, too. There have been some changes. When I say, for example, the stock was at $39.02 10 years ago, that's not actually true if you listen to that podcast back then. It was 20 times higher than that, but we're always factoring in stock splits as well. But Rick when you strike at the heart of it, why has Alphabet been such a winner over these 10 years?

Rick Munarriz: I think they had this great market position where they were the undisputed leader in search. A lot of times with great power comes great responsibility. I'm bringing Spider-Man into everything I'm going to do now, so it's all going to come together. With them, they realized that, hey, we have this great platform the audience, we have become the default. We can advertise on this. What else can we do?

Again, 10 years ago, yes, they had YouTube. But YouTube was just this free platform. Now, YouTube, you can pay YouTube premium. You won't have ads. You can play for YouTube music as a subscribe to that. YouTube TV as a replacement for your traditional TV. That's my answer. I love YouTube TV. Same. You have all these things, and it works. Because you already trust the Google brand, the Alphabet brand, you're fine with these products, so it's easy to get subscribers to become, so you're the service company now. Not only that, they're Cloud hosting. It is the fact that you have all these servers. Why not just host things? Now they're getting into the actual AI chips. They had the TPU chips for a while. They were innovating 10 years ago. Before AI was a thing, they were in AI, before Nvidia was starting to take off, they were already working on stuff from gaming chips. But now they have it, and now they can start selling it, not at the level of Nvidia or AMD, but you have a platform where you're creating these things that are diversifying the business model, being able to diversify is a good thing.

For Alphabet, in particular, you have a business that is reliable, countable, and so large that it can take its economies of scale and cash in wherever it goes. You see that with Waymo, you can afford to spend $100,000 on a car that Rick is just going to see outside down the street and not get on at any given moment because it can take these bets. They have that capital to take chances like that, and when they pay off, as Waymo looks like it’s doing, and it’s starting to expand, and the whole autonomous driving thing is starting to take off, I really like Alphabet’s chances here.

David Gardner: Relentlessly innovative, certainly a stock I'd buy today, feeling good about the next 10 years. Really glad 10 years ago this week. I added this one to our five-stock sampler, five low risk stocks for the next year. It's time for the big reveal. I should mention, when I picked these stocks for one year, 2016-'17, history shows they were up 21.6% as a group. The market over that subsequent year was up 14.9%. Outperforming by about seven percentage points. Very solid performance. But the real beauty of investing, which is featured on offer every week with this podcast now in our 12th year is buying greatness to hold. I like to find excellence, buy excellence, and add to excellence over time. I sell mediocrity, although even then, I often don't sell, but that's how I invest. The winners so outweigh your losers. This sampler is a great example. Now, 10 years later, the average stock here is up 414%. That's taking all five of them and averaging their performance. You already know, dear listener, the market's up 252%. This sampler has been a solid winner by more than 150 percentage points per pick over these 10 years. Rick, there it is 10 years later for five low-risk stocks for the next year, or in our case, the next decade. What jumps out to you as an overall lesson that you can pull from the performance of this sampler, Rick, and/or anything you'd like to highlight about any of these individual stocks?

Rick Munarriz: I think all these samplers, it's good that it's a sampler. Because if you would have taken just one or two of the underperformers, it would not have worked. Sometimes this little basket of stock approach does work. Not the biggest takeaway hub, but you mentioned Canadian National, which again, not a very good performer. But while the stock has been a laggard, its dividend has more than doubled. You're talking about 1.7 yield now. Now it's 2.1%. It's the highest yielding by more than a percent, 100 basis points of all the other four. They all pay dividends. You do have a case where even if the stock is a laggard, I mean, Disney returned to paying its dividend. It's also playing its highest dividend that has in a while on a yield basis because the stock has gone nowhere for the last 10 years. You are potential income plays. That I guess, that adds to the low risk quality that you found in these five companies 10 years earlier.

David Gardner: When I think, just looking at this sampler, what were the two winners? What were the two big picks? They're two of the largest public companies in the world today. By the way, they were some of the biggest public companies in the world when they had market caps five or 10 times lower than they have today. I think we're living through a time where Rule Breaker investing is really rewarding, especially as big companies get big R&D budgets. Unlike a lot of the big dogs of the past, General Electric comes to mind. I would say maybe IBM, too. These companies remain extremely innovative 40, 50. I'm not sure we can go that much farther back for Apple. I don't know, something like late '70s for Apple. That still is more than 50 years ago. But I think part of what used to be true of American capitalism is companies as they got bigger started getting slower and less able, less nimble and could get disrupted more easily than maybe the world we're living in today where the big innovators, if they truly remain innovative in man, even though Tim Cook was more of what did you say? Rick, an executioner? Executioner, yes. An innovator. Nevertheless, these companies remain top dogs in their industries. That's a great reason to have bought and held their stocks over the last 10 years or the 10 years as we did before that. But who cares about the past? We're talking about the next 10 years. If I were looking over these five, I'd say, those are still probably my two favorites. Any final thoughts, Rick Munarriz?

Rick Munarriz: Again, the two best performers would eventually become part of the MAG 7. The other three with the Drag three, I guess. I don't know. But again, obviously, I still have a heart out for Disney. But again, in Canadian National on the Ecolab, I'm not giving up on those. Again, I think all five stocks still fall under the low risk category, despite the fact that they had very different outcomes over the course of one year and then 10 years.

David Gardner: There you have it. Thank you again, Rick Munarriz. The latest installment of 10 years later. I think we're one of the few podcasts in the world today that reviews actual picks made on the podcast 10 years later, and much more importantly, we draw real lessons from real picks made a long time ago. Over the only time frame that matters to me, and that's the long term. Anyway, over the next 240 weeks, every 10 weeks we'll be bringing you back the next sampler. I'm sad to say, they're not all this great, but 10 weeks from today, we're going to be back with five stocks to put under the tree. Of course, December of 2026, 10 years later. In the meantime, hope you had fun, Rick, and I hope you learned a few things this week. Fool on.

David Gardner has positions in Alphabet, Apple, Canadian National Railway, Duolingo, Etsy, Tesla, and Walt Disney. Rick Munarriz has positions in Alphabet, Apple, Duolingo, Nvidia, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Apple, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, Duolingo, Etsy, Nvidia, Tesla, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends Canadian National Railway, Ecolab, and WM. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.