6 Signs of a Winning Stock, Each Shown by a Real Company

Back on Dec. 27, 2010, I bought some Google stock at a split-adjusted $15. 03 a share. The company has since renamed itself Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), split its stock twice, and doubled down on artificial intelligence. On Oct. 16, 2026, the shares closed at $340. 59. That's a 2,166. 1% gain in nearly 16 years. A $1,000 stake from that day would be worth about $22,661 now. I'd love to tell you I saw it all coming, but I did not predict the AI boom or YouTube's growth. What I saw was a business with traits that tend to show up in long-term winners. Those traits can be measured.