4 Monster Stocks to Buy and Hold for the Next Decade

Manali Pradhan, The Motley Fool

Mon, Jun 2, 2025, 1:10 AM 6 min read

• Microsoft’s AI and cloud business is growing at a rapid pace.

• Meta’s AI investments are translating into deeper user engagement and higher advertising revenue.

• Amazon and Vertex are rapidly building wealth for investors.

• 10 stocks we like better than Microsoft ›

The U.S. equity market has been anything but calm in 2025, as several factors, including persistent trade tensions, rising macroeconomic uncertainties, and geopolitical challenges, have weighed on overall investor sentiment.

But seasoned investors know this: Periods of market volatility offer a chance to acquire fundamentally strong, high-quality stocks with robust growth prospects and a strong competitive moat at attractive valuation levels. Historically, this strategy has yielded handsome returns for patient investors.

Against this backdrop, here's why these four stocks can prove exceptional buy-and-hold picks in the next decade.

Few companies are better positioned to ride the artificial intelligence (AI) wave than Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). The company plays a critical role in building AI infrastructure worldwide. Its deep partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI enabled it to infuse AI across its entire ecosystem. Copilot, its AI-powered assistant, integrated across the Office 365 productivity suite and GitHub, is all set to become a key revenue driver in the coming years.

Then there's Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform, which now commands a 22% market share globally in the AI infrastructure space. The company is also building new data centers globally, opening new facilities in 10 countries in the third quarter alone. This has laid the foundation for Azure's future growth.

Its highly diversified business model with recurring revenue streams truly sets Microsoft apart. The company's annuity mix (the proportion of its revenue derived from recurring sources like subscriptions and long-term contracts) was a very high 98% in the fiscal third quarter of 2025, which ended March 31. Commercial remaining performance obligations, a barometer to gauge future revenue visibility, also grew 34% year over year to $315 billion. The balance sheet is also robust, with a cash balance of $79.6 billion. This has allowed Microsoft to pursue an aggressive AI investment strategy while returning $9.7 billion to shareholders as dividends and share repurchases.

All these factors make Microsoft a smart pick now.

Meta Platforms' (NASDAQ: META) dominance in digital advertising and solid growth prospects make it attractive for long-term investors. The company generated nearly $41.4 billion in revenue in the recent quarter by reaching 3.4 billion people daily across its social media applications, almost 40% of the global population.