3 Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever: A Long-Term Play for Your Portfolio

The market's been a bit unusual of late. Many investors are honed in on the market's most scintillating growth stories and looking for the next monster-sized mover.

As veteran investors can attest, however, in the long run sustainable quality earnings and reasonable valuations are what matter the most.

With that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three stocks you can comfortably buy and hold forever. See if you can identify the one overarching philosophical element that each name brings to the table.

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1. Amazon

You may already know that e-commerce giant Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) hasn't been a particularly great performer of late. Shares are where they were as of late-2024, in fact, with the most recent setback being driven by plans for a stunning $200 billion worth of capital expenditures on AI infrastructure this year alone.

Before that, the headwind was mostly just the sheer difficulty of achieving growth when you're already a massive company.

The soft patch isn't likely to linger much longer, though, once investors remember what makes this company such a powerhouse with some serious longevity. That's its willingness to try almost anything in an effort to expand its revenue-generating ecosystem.

Think about it. Although cloud computing makes up more than half of its operating income now, Amazon Web Services didn't exist until 2006. And Amazon's advertising venture? Although Amazon.com and its international sister sites have allowed sellers to pay to feature their products for a while now, the company has only recently begun to take this monetization of its well-trafficked e-commerce site so seriously.

But it's been a brilliant rethinking of how to leverage the asset. Over the course of 2025, Amazon collected nearly $69 billion worth of high-margin revenue, up 22% from 2024's tally of $56.2 billion. The Kindle e-reader, 2017's acquisition of Whole Foods Market, and Amazon Prime itself are other examples of the company's creative thinking that ultimately widens its revenue net.

The point is, this company's corporate ethos is one that's willing and able to adapt as the world evolves and new opportunities surface. That's not likely to change anytime soon.

2. Berkshire Hathaway

More than a few investors have understandably been leery of owning Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) since Warren Buffett stepped down as CEO and chief stock-picker as of the end of last year. This worry, however, is largely rooted in a misunderstanding of what Berkshire actually is.

Although it's often seen and treated as one, Berkshire Hathaway isn't a mutual fund consisting of nothing but Buffett-approved stocks. Only about one-third of the conglomerate's current value reflects its holdings in publicly traded companies, in fact. Rather, Berkshire is mostly the world's most amazing insurance company, capitalizing on what some might even consider the perfect glitch in the system. As Buffett himself explained back in 2010, "This collect-now, pay-later model [insurance] leaves us holding large sums -- money we call 'float' -- that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire's benefit... This combination allows us to enjoy the use of free money -- and, better yet, get paid for holding it."

Don't misunderstand. Berkshire's current management team must still invest its assets wisely, for growth as well as cash flow, and also to make sure its insurance operation remains solvent in the near and distant future.

It's not limited to stocks to do so, however. Nearly another one-third of Berkshire Hathaway's current value consists of reliable privately owned cash cows like flooring company Shaw, Pilot travel centers, Dairy Queen, railroad BNSF, and Duracell batteries, just to name a few. As long as current chief executive Greg Abel doesn't try to tweak this proven winning structure too much -- which is unlikely -- Berkshire can not only survive indefinitely, but thrive indefinitely.

3. Alphabet

Finally, add Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) to your list of stocks to buy and hold forever, particularly while you can get in at a price that's about 10% below its early February peak. That may be about all the discount you're going to see from this ticker for a while.

Much like Amazon, what makes Alphabet such a great long-term prospect is its willingness and ability to evolve. In its infancy, it was just a search engine. In the meantime, it's added what's turned into the world's most popular email service, the world's most-used mobile operating system, and at least the United States' most-watched streaming platform. That's YouTube.

In the meantime, Google remains the world's most used search engine, as well as the company's biggest cash cow, although it's not inconceivable that cloud computing could eventually become its breadwinning business once more organizations begin utilizing artificial intelligence for reasons ranging from drug development to financial modeling to factory optimization, and more.

While Google Cloud's revenue grew to the tune of 48% year over year last quarter to drive even greater operating income growth, its $17.6 billion top line still only scratches the surface of the $3.3 trillion that Straits Research believes the cloud computing industry will be worth annually by 2032.

The kicker: Although institutional interest in Google's home-grown, AI-capable Tensor Processing Units is impressive to be sure (Anthropic, Salesforce, and OpenAI have already made major commitments to the use of its newest Tensor chips), what's not being fully appreciated is the fact that Alphabet can also use this advanced hardware for its own purposes. It's already got a powerful presence across most facets of the World Wide Web. If it can use artificial intelligence to predict trends or sociocultural developments, it can evolve and develop new products or adjust search results before they're needed rather than after the fact. That's huge.

James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and Salesforce. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.