Stocks & Time: A Brief, Sad Story

People buy things. It’s a fact of life. And some companies are very good at selling those things. So it goes. If you happen to have a thousand dollars – a sum that feels increasingly theoretical these days – and a decade to kill, there are a few places it might not vanish quite so quickly.

Costco, Coca-Cola, and Amazon. These aren’t exciting names, not like rockets or miracle cures. They’re just… persistent. Like dust. And, surprisingly, that can be a good thing.

Bulk, Bubbles, and Boxes

Costco. A warehouse full of things you didn’t know you needed, purchased in quantities that suggest a mild hoarding problem. Over 145 million members. That’s a lot of people buying toilet paper in bulk. Nearly half of the new members are under 40, which is… disturbing. What are they stockpiling for? So it goes.

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The membership fee is the trick, of course. Predictability. Cash flow. It’s a subscription to… consumption. In good times, people buy more. In bad times, they still buy things, because even despair requires paper towels. The stock has done okay, better than the S&P 500 over five years. Not a moonshot, just… steady. They’ve been giving dividends for over 20 years. A quiet sort of success.

Then there’s Coca-Cola. The brown, bubbly elixir of… well, of everything, really. Sold in almost every country. A Dividend King, they call it. Meaning they’ve been handing out little bits of profit for at least 50 years. Not exciting, but reliable. Like a slightly melancholic grandfather. The beta is a mere 0.39. Meaning it barely moves when everything else is crashing. A comforting thought, if you’re the type who finds comfort in such things.

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If you’re looking for a place to park your money and forget about it, Coca-Cola is a reasonable choice. It won’t make you rich, but it might prevent you from becoming completely destitute.

And finally, Amazon. The everything store. It started with books, then everything else. Now it owns the cloud, delivers your packages, and knows more about you than your mother. A trillion-dollar company. Which is… a lot of money. So it goes.

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The price-to-earnings ratio is around 30. Not cheap, but not outrageous. They keep adding new businesses. Cloud computing, advertising, who knows what else. It’s a relentless engine of… commerce. Difficult to imagine it stopping anytime soon.

Ten Years, Give or Take

These companies aren’t glamorous. They don’t promise salvation. They just… exist. They sell things people want, or think they want. And they’ve been doing it for a long time. They’re built to last, or at least to survive. They’ll probably still be around in ten years, selling the same things to the same people. So it goes.

If you have a thousand dollars and a decade to spare, Costco, Coca-Cola, and Amazon are a decent enough mix. They won’t solve your problems, but they might not make them much worse. And in the grand scheme of things, that’s about the best you can hope for.

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2026-01-16 15:04