I thought the best stock ever to invest in, ever, was Wal-Mart. There are three main stocks that retrospectively would have been thousand-baggers: 1) WMT (from its lowest to its highest it gained 283199%) 2) MSFT (low to high 50000%) 3) CSCO (low to high 100000% but i hate cisco and i hope they die)
I have no idea why I am compelled to reply to anything you say, but you the champion of GLOBAL GROWTH STORY are completely wrong. Those companies (WMT, MSFT, CSCO) are modern giants, there will be new giants that will grow in other industries over 20 year time span. There always have been, there always will be.
I think the moderator needs to define the parameters better. Add a time dimension maybe. My main contention is that there have to be plenty of companies out there that have been traded in one form or another for at least a couple of hundred years. One of these stocks would probably register as being greatest percentage return. The records of mergers, name changes, dividends, etcetera probably could not be found past a few decades. Think of it though: 6% returns/yr over 200+ years or 25%/yr over the life of MSFT or the like. South Seas corporation was publically traded in- I guess- London and maybe Amsterdam. It's possible that it has been traded in one form another since. If it was bought out by a private corporation and subsequently publically traded again that would just make things tougher to compute. Greatest absolute $ gain must be XOM. Isn't that the stock with the greatest market cap? --I'm surprised BRK.A hasn't been mentioned.
"Greatest gain in a stock ever" goes to XOM. It has the largest market cap in the world apparently. *Forbes lists PTR as larger but is erroneous. XOM's market cap looks to be less than a few percent of its IPO market cap. The difference in current market cap from IPO market cap is far greater than any other publicly traded company. XOM, however, is probably not the best percentage return stock since its inception.