For more than a century, Wall Street has been a wealth-building machine for those who are patient. Over long periods, high-quality companies and the indexes they’re a part of tend to increase in value.
Something else that’s commonplace on Wall Street is change. It’s perfectly normal for innovation, acquisitions, competitive advantages, and other factors to shake up the world’s largest publicly traded companies on a fairly regular basis.
Just 18 years ago, companies like General Electric, AIG, and Intel were among the 10 largest publicly traded companies by market cap.