Buy and Hold: 4 Stocks to Keep for the Long Term

Noise never stops in the 2026 market: the Iran conflict, tariff uncertainty, the question of how long AI infrastructure spending lasts, and fears of a weakening economy keep shaking prices. Yet the S&P 500 sits near its peak at 7,709 points. The host asks one question against this backdrop: which four stocks would you hold for a decade without touching them? According to the Motley Fool team's September 2026 selections, the answer narrows to four concepts: membership power , scale , cloud , and patient capital . That is where the buy and hold philosophy begins: not guessing the winner, but buying a business that compounds for years at a reasonable, if not cheap, price.

First the background. Motley Fool writer Matthew Frankel notes in his early-September list that long-term picks remain attractive despite the volatility, with the Nasdaq at 26,936 and the Dow Jones at 51,623 points hovering near the top. Snapshot prices of that day photograph an expensive-looking market: Apple at 341 dollars, Amazon at 247, Google shares at 338, Meta at 723, Microsoft at 512. So the thesis is not finding a cheap market but picking businesses that can be carried for years inside an expensive one. The host builds the video on this ground: ignore the noise, watch the cash entering the register every year.

The first stock is Costco. The thesis is plain: pay a membership fee, buy everyday value cheap. The company is opening roughly two dozen net new warehouses in 2026, moving older clubs into larger formats, and pouring billions of dollars into buildings, depots, and remodels. The shares trade near 924 dollars, the market value is 409 billion dollars, and the twelve-month range runs from 844 to 1,096 dollars. Even if a recession arrives, people keep buying paper towels and detergent, which is why the membership renewal rate sits at the heart of this thesis.

Fourth-quarter results landed on 24 September 2026 and beat expectations. According to the MarketWatch analysis carried by Morningstar, traffic grew, renewal rates improved for a second straight quarter, core margins expanded, and the store-opening pace is accelerating. But the same analysis carries a warning: priced at roughly 40 times forward earnings, the stock prices flawless execution rather than ordinary goodness. The after-results move stayed limited at 0.2 percent , the price sat near 898 dollars, and the shares stand 4 percent higher year to date. The Oppenheimer analysts' note is instructive: the stock fell after seven of the previous ten earnings reports. Zacks, meanwhile, highlights expansion and digital growth from the earnings call; the quarter had closed on 30 August, according to the company's investor relations calendar.

The second stock is Walmart. The thesis is that the everyday low price promise grows more durable with automation and digital tools. In its latest results, enterprise e-commerce sales jumped 26 percent, delivery times fell under three hours on many orders, and roughly half of US e-commerce volume flows through this system. The shares trade near 109 dollars, market value is 857 billion dollars, the yearly range runs 99 to 135 dollars, and gross margin stands at 25.23 percent. The host's line sticks in the mind: the customer count is so large that a long-term shock can hardly wound the company permanently. Scale works here as a moat.

The technology leg: search, cloud, and robotaxis

The third stock is Alphabet. The Google Services arm runs on YouTube, Play, Gmail, Android, and Chrome alongside search advertising, with hardware and in-app purchases also feeding the register. The real growth engine is the cloud: Google Cloud ranks third behind AWS and Azure, produces about 20 percent of company revenue, and the infrastructure market is expected to quadruple by 2030. The driverless-car company Waymo, inside the Other Bets arm, leads the young robotaxi industry by a clear margin. Add profitability, cash on hand, a paid dividend, and hundreds of billions earmarked for AI infrastructure, and a compounding growth story appears behind the 338-dollar price.

The fourth stock is Berkshire Hathaway. The B shares trade at 504 dollars and the A shares above 757 thousand dollars; the holding model is one of the market's most patient capital examples. Ranked in the Fool list's top ten, the company carries the portfolio's defensive character: a structure that waits years in cash and buys in crises does with institutional discipline what the individual investor cannot. The host positions this stock as the quartet's insurance policy; it never sprints, but it stands through storms.

The logic holding the four together

Two complementary notes complete the picture. The first is a transformation story: Unilever spent two years slimming into a focused home, beauty, and personal-care business, combining its foods arm with McCormick into a separate flavor group and leaving behind a roughly 44.7-billion-dollar pure home-and-care company with 62 percent of revenue from fast-growing markets. The shares trade at 62 dollars on a 135-billion-dollar value. The second is the dividend wing: in his September piece carried on AOL pages, Micah Zimmerman names two dividend stocks for a five-year horizon, Church & Dwight with steady growth and a reliable dividend, and Costco with membership growth and rising shareholder returns. Stocks that pay while holders sleep are the quiet force keeping a portfolio upright in a sell-off.

The current photograph of the growth wing comes from the 24 September Fool piece: Meta at 744 dollars, Microsoft at 501, Google at 338, Apple at 337, Nvidia at 226. Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft sit in the 3-trillion-dollar club, with Meta knocking on the door. This table explains why the quartet is built value-heavy: taking technology excitement through Alphabet and balancing the rest with cash-generating retail and a holding company buys sleeping comfort in 2026-style volatility.

The last lesson concerns sell-offs. According to the Fool writer's 17 September analysis, waiting for turbulence to end can be riskier than investing through it; history says those waiting on the sidelines usually lag. The practical translation is plain: a staggered plan instead of a lump-sum buy, a horizon of at least five years instead of timing attempts, and a frame that reads declines as discounts. That is the four stocks' shared sentence: buy a good business, do not rush if it is dear, do not fear when it dips, do not sell.