David Gardner Keeps the 100-Bagger Dream Alive

At FoolFest 2026, The Motley Fool's annual gathering for members, one of them put a question to David Gardner, the company's co-founder and Chief Rule Breaker: "How will we get 100-baggers when stocks that dominate IPOs come out at a valuation of $100 billion or more?"

A 100-bagger turns $1,000 into $100,000. SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) listed in June at a valuation near $1.75 trillion. Multiply that by 100 and you need a $175 trillion company.

David agreed the giants probably won't get there. "I don't think you're gonna be getting 100-baggers from those companies, of course. It doesn't mean that getting a 15-bagger isn't something that is a worthy achievement."

But wait! We're nothing if not motley, after all. David quickly followed up:

If we're talking about [a] 100-bagger, we should be thinking in terms of, let's just say for the fun of it, in the next 30 years, there will be $50 trillion companies. That sounds crazy now, but so did a trillion about 20 years ago. So then you're doing the math backward if you're trying for [a] 100-bagger, which I don't think is necessarily the math you should be shooting for. But if you are, then you're like, 'Okay, so we're looking for half a trillion dollars right now.'

The Math That Runs Backward

The man who'd just waved off the giants had put a 100-bagger's starting line at half a trillion dollars.

Both halves of his answer hold up, because a 100-bagger measures the gap between what a company is worth today and what it becomes. How wide that gap can get depends on how big the biggest companies grow, and that number keeps climbing as the world economy does. When Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) went public in 1997, the market valued it at $438 million. Back then, a trillion-dollar company sounded like science fiction.

Now run David's math on SpaceX. It needs $175 trillion, 3.5 times the figure he floated "for the fun of it." A $30 billion innovator needs $3 trillion. That's a huge number, and it still fits under a $50 trillion ceiling with plenty of room to spare.

So the likeliest 100-baggers of the next 30 years are companies worth tens or hundreds of billions today, or less, that grow into the giants of 2056.

Where the Book Says to Look

None of this is new to readers of Rule Breaker Investing. Its first stock trait asks for the top dog and first mover in an important, emerging industry. Chapter 7 backs that up with a table of the best-performing S&P 500 stocks from 1995 through 2024. The top two, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Amazon, both went public during that window, so ordinary investors could buy them early.

The book also names the second source of 100-baggers. Traits help you find the stocks, and Habits help you hold them. David's formula is Habits × Traits. You multiply because a zero on either side wipes out the result. Finding the next great company does nothing for you if you sell it after the first scary drop.

The View From 2056

For any of this to work, the biggest companies have to keep getting bigger. David thinks they will: "The world economy is gonna be much larger 20 and 50 years from now than it is today." Innovators also have to keep coming public while they still have room to run.

If either belief feels shaky, an index fund is a perfectly Foolish choice. It will own tomorrow's giants, too, just in thinner slices. David's bet is that $50 trillion companies will sound as quaint in 2056 as a $438 million bookstore sounds today.

Your Take

Name your best 100-bagger candidate for the next 30 years -- and make the case!

David Gardner has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in Amazon and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.