The S&P 500 index tracks the stock performance of America's biggest companies, and it has averaged annual gains of roughly 10% over multiple decades. That's pretty darn good performance, enough to more than quintuple an investment over 15 years for those who purchased exchange-traded funds (ETFs) mirroring the index.
Some individual stocks, though, have done better than that -- much better.
Image source: Getty Images.
In the table below, you'll see that the S&P 500 has been growing at a much faster rate over the past 15 years compared to its long-term 10% average. That outsized performance is due, in part, to the eye-popping average annual gains of some of its components, including what some might label as monster stocks, that have managed monster performances.
Average Annual Return
SPDR S&P 500 ETF(NYSEMKT: SPY)
14.85%
12.90%
14.18%
Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA)
73.46%
73.83%
50.57%
Intuitive Surgical(NASDAQ: ISRG)
23.08%
26.07%
20.03%
Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT)
20.78%
26.64%
21.75%
Data source: Morningstar.com as of June 6, 2025.
These kinds of returns are not guaranteed to continue. Many dynamically growing companies see their growth rates slow as they become massive companies. But a select few manage to keep up that outsized growth. Here's a closer look at three companies with this potential and some reasons why you might want to buy and/or keep holding any of them.
1. Nvidia
Nvidia got its start as a maker of semiconductor chips for the videogame industry, but it has expanded its scope in the past decade. A side hustle into chip design catered to aid cryptocurrency mining has led to the development of chips and software that are now fueling the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, and it is churning out gobs of chips for data centers -- enough to be the world's leading supplier of graphics processing units for the data centers used in cloud computing.
Data centers have replaced gaming as Nvidia's focus, and the company raked in $39 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026's first quarter from its data center business -- fully 89% of total revenue. Better still, CEO Jensen Huang forecasts that AI infrastructure spending could top $1 trillion annually within a few years, and he sees Nvidia capturing most of that business.
Despite the monster performance over the past several years, Nvidia stock doesn't appear to be wildly overvalued at recent levels. Its recent forward-looking price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 33, for example, is well below the five-year average of 40. Consider buying Nvidia to hold for the next 10 years or more to take advantage of this forecasted growth.
2. Intuitive Surgical
Intuitive Surgical is another strong stock performer, though it's not as attractively valued as Nvidia lately. Its forward P/E was recently at a steep 72, well above the five-year average of 56 (which is steep as well). So think twice before buying at these levels and look for opportunities to buy on the dip. But if you already own the stock, you might want to hold on.
Intuitive Surgical is a leader in robotic surgery equipment. It has more than 8,600 of its million-dollar-plus da Vinci robotic surgery systems installed in 71 countries. Together, they've been used to perform more than 14 million medical procedures.
I'm a shareholder and I'm hanging on because I expect the company to keep selling and installing surgical systems, and to keep raking in profits from doing so. Notably, Intuitive Surgical derives 84% of its revenue not from the systems themselves, but from dependable recurring sales of servicing, supplies, and accessories for the machines.
3. Microsoft
Microsoft is a tech giant with many growing operations contributing to its steady growth. It's home to the dominant Office 365 suite of applications, the Azure cloud computing platform, the Xbox gaming platform, the Windows operating system, and even the business-oriented social media giant LinkedIn, among other ventures.
Microsoft is huge (its market value hovers around $3.5 trillion), but it's still growing at a fairly rapid clip, with some of its recent growth largely attributable to its AI-related ventures. In its third quarter of fiscal 2025, revenue was up by 13% year over year, and net income rose by 18%. Its intelligent cloud division grew by 21%. The company is generating more cash than it needs to spend on growth, so it's paying shareholders a dividend that recently yielded 0.71%. (That might not seem like a lot, but the yield is pushed down because of strong share price performance and the dividend is growing briskly -- up from $2.09 per share in 2020 to $3.24 per share currently.)
Despite the strong share price performance, its stock remains appealingly valued, too, with a recent forward P/E of 31 only a bit above the five-year average of 30. Given the steady growth, the stock seems well worth hanging on to for the next decade -- and beyond.
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Selena Maranjian has positions in Intuitive Surgical, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intuitive Surgical, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
