Want $1 Million in Retirement? Invest $50,000 in These 3 Stocks and Wait a Decade.

In the world of investing, numbers in the billions and even trillions of dollars get tossed around frequently, but for individual retail investors, even $1 million is a big deal.

If you could build a stock portfolio up to $1 million by the time you retire, in addition to your Social Security benefits and 401(k) or other employer-sponsored plan, you likely would find that to be a comfortable nest egg.

The keys to achieving that are patience and persistence -- but you'll also need to pick some good, high-performing stocks. To show you the value of time, if you had a 20-year time horizon until retirement and a $10,000 initial investment, with $100 contributed monthly, would reach $1 million with about a 21% annual return.

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That doesn't sound so far-fetched, as the Nasdaq Composite index has averaged a 17% annualized return over the past decade.

But if you've started your retirement planning efforts later, and you only have a 10-year window left to build your nest egg, then you obviously have some ground to make up. Here's how you could do it in a decade, and three stocks that perhaps could help get you there.

Stocks to get you to $1 million

Reaching your goal with a 20-year window would only require a $10,000 initial investment and a 21% annualized return. If you take away 10 years worth of contributions and time for compound growth to work, you'd have to start with an initial $50,000 investment, contribute $100 per month, and generate an average return of 30%. That's obviously a much harder rate of return to achieve.

Finding stocks that have the potential to average 30% annual returns for a decade is not easy, but over the past 10 years, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) did it, as did Tesla and Broadcom, and Apple came close.

What stocks could do that over the next 10 years? In my view, Nvidia is still one of them.

Nvidia's stock price has come back to earth a bit. It's down by about 15% from its November peak, so its valuation has had a bit of a reset. But its advantages and its wide moat in designing GPUs for data centers will remain in place, and various studies estimate that as much as $7 trillion will be spent on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure by 2030.

For many of the same reasons, I would also put Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) on the list. As the world's leading chip foundry, manufacturing semiconductors for Nvidia and other chipmakers, it has a virtually unassailable moat. Today, its share of the third-party chipmaking market is about 67%, and it produces about 90% of all advanced AI chips.

It also makes some 90% of the necessary packaging for the chips. All of this will position it squarely in the center of the AI boom for years to come. Plus, the stock is relatively cheap, trading at 32 times earnings and 24 times forward earnings.

The final stock of my trio to set and forget for 10 years is Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Like the others, it is relatively cheap, trading at just 25 times earnings. Further, it is investing heavily in AI infrastructure and has been gaining market share on Amazon in cloud computing.

Also, it is looking toward the next big thing, investing heavily and positioning itself to compete in quantum computing when that technological revolution takes off. With its size, resources, and early-mover advantages, it could be a major player in that space, too.

Dave Kovaleski has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.