5 Wealth-Building Stocks to Buy With an Inheritance That Will Help Build the Next Inheritance
With $124 trillion set to move in the Great Wealth Transfer, these wealth-building stocks can help you leave something behind for your kids in turn.
They say "you can't take it with you." Egypt's pharaohs might have agreed to disagree, but the baby boomer generation seems to understand this fact of life.
Financial experts have long expected that over the next two decades, baby boomers (and members of other older generations) will pass along over $100 trillion to spouses, children and other heirs — a phenomenon dubbed the "Great Wealth Transfer."
We'll see what actually happens when those assets start landing in new accounts, but according to a Citizens Bank survey of 1,500 U.S. adults, the majority (60%) said they'd invest at least part of it. And in a new survey by Morning Consult, commissioned by Kiplinger for our Trillion Dollar Talk campaign, 15% of adult children said they'd use an inheritance to "invest and grow wealth," the third most popular response after providing for the family and investing in a home.
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Why not? Many Americans are behind on their own retirement savings, and even those who are on track wouldn't complain about affording a cushier post-career lifestyle. And some in that number might already be thinking several decades down the road when it's time to repay the gesture by passing along their wealth to their own spouses and children.
As one survey respondent told Morning Consult/Kiplinger, they'd put an inheritance from their parents "into investments," since "that's what pretty much helped them earn it in the first place."
Today, we'll look at five stocks for the task — each of which already boasts a place among the greatest wealth-generating equities of the past century. Data is as of August 28.
Most stock-market wealth creation has come from a few dozen companies
If you're looking to grow your wealth, there are few better places to start than with a 2026 study from Hendrik Bessembinder, a finance professor at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, who researched the investment outcomes from nearly 30,000 stocks over the 100 years between 1926 and 2025. In the report, he outlines the greatest wealth creators over that period.
What constitutes shareholder wealth creation (SWC)?
"The improvement (or decline) in the wealth of a company's shareholders in aggregate over the period that the company's shares were listed on the public stock markets, as compared to the outcome that would have been attained had the invested capital instead earned one-month Treasury bill returns. SWC considers net distributions (dividends, spinoffs, share repurchases, new share issuances, etc.)."
Our own Dan Burrows explains that "T-bills are a kind of stand-in for opportunity cost. And the difference [in performance] over time between the two investment choices, when positive, is wealth creation. It's the enhancement."
Importantly, Bessembinder found that wealth creation within the stock market was highly concentrated among just a handful of names. "Just 46 firms account for half of the $91 trillion in net wealth creation over the full century," he says.
And that's where we'll start our search for stocks that you can use to build your own wealth, to the point where you have something substantial to leave behind for your kids. Each company mentioned here is among those 46 firms Bessembinder identifies and has certain characteristics and advantages that point toward their ability to continue generating returns well in excess of that T-bill benchmark.
Note: Lifetime wealth creation is measured starting at the initial stock-market listing or January 1926, whichever is more recent, through December 31, 2025.
Merck & Co.
- Sector: Healthcare
- Market value: $366.2 billion
- Lifetime wealth creation: $519.1 billion
- Percent of market total: 0.57%
Merck & Co. (MRK) is a healthcare-sector giant whose roots go back all the way to 1668 with the founding of Germany's Merck Group, which created the American affiliate we all know in 1891.
The company is responsible for blockbuster treatments and vaccines such as Gardasil (HPV), Januvia (type 2 diabetes), Zocor (high cholesterol) and most notably Keytruda, which has generated nearly $180 billion in global sales since its debut in 2014. It also has developed a large animal healthcare business.
The formula for continued wealth creation in just about any pharmaceutical or biotechnology name is pretty straightforward: They need to discover and/or purchase successful treatments that are lucrative enough to offset any declines in their established drugs. But that's a particularly tall task for MRK given that Keytruda, which makes up roughly half of the company's revenue, will see its core patent expire in 2028.
How will Merck counter this? Well, for one, it has compiled a promising developmental pipeline of treatments, including infinatamab deruxtecan (extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer), opevesostat (metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer) and tulisokibart (ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease).
But perhaps more importantly, it has built a "patent wall" of more than 1,200 patents across 53 countries, regions and territories, according to a report from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism:
"This investigation found 211 granted patents that help protect Keytruda through to at least 2042 — a full 14 years after the originals expire. There are also at least another 337 'pending' patents that, if granted, could also extend the drug's reign. The vast majority of the applications came after the drug's initial approval in 2014."
And now, Merck appears on the precipice of a breakthrough. In August, Merck and Moderna (MRNA) announced that their jointly developed experimental mRNA cancer vaccine met the primary goal of a Phase 3 clinical trial. This large trial of more than 1,000 melanoma patients showed that a combination of the intismeran vaccine and Keytruda was more effective in preventing the return and spread of melanoma and resulted in fewer side effects than the use of Keytruda alone. It's another boon for Keytruda, as doctors sometimes will not recommend it because of the risk of side effects.
In addition to all of the above, Merck pays a dividend that has grown for 16 consecutive years and currently yields an above-average 2.3%. It also throws billions of dollars at stock buybacks in most years.
Walmart
- Sector: Consumer staples
- Market value: $820.8 billion
- Lifetime wealth creation: $1.2 trillion
- Percent of market total: 1.32%
Why would we look to Walmart (WMT) to be a top-tier wealth creator given that it's a big-box retailer during the era of e-commerce?
Well, for one, the death of brick-and-mortar retail has been heavily exaggerated. While e-commerce has been growing both nominally and as a percentage share of U.S. retail sales since its creation, brick-and-mortar still accounts for the vast majority (77%) of dollars spent. And after a big leap in online buying adoption during COVID, e-commerce's penetration growth has moderated.
But also, Walmart is the second-largest online retailer in America. It's a distant second to Amazon (AMZN), sure, but e-commerce accounts for roughly a quarter of Walmart's total U.S. sales, which, by the way, still dwarf Amazon's domestic retail revenues.
Believe it or not, the sizable majority (62%) of its wealth creation since joining the public markets in 1972 has come since 2016.
Walmart is a retailer, so its ability to continue being a significant creator of wealth going forward largely rests on the power of the American consumer. Yes, Walmart is technically considered a consumer staples company given that it deals in groceries and personal products that have a certain level of backstop, but much of what it sells is discretionary in nature.
As for other shareholder rewards? WMT has a modest payout that's just below the S&P 500's yield, but it's a Dividend King that has grown its cash distribution for 53 consecutive years — and should that continue, shareholders should continue to enjoy higher and rising yields on cost.
Walmart also repurchases gobs of its own stock, spending between $2 billion and nearly $10 billion on buybacks every year for the past decade.
Amazon.com
- Sector: Consumer discretionary
- Market value: $2.87 trillion
- Lifetime wealth creation: $2.3 trillion
- Percent of market total: 2.49%
We'll also look to No. 2 retailer (and No. 1 online retailer) Amazon.com (AMZN), which, at $2.3 trillion, is also the No. 5 wealth creator of the past 100 years.
But its future growth will depend on much more than its retail business.
Amazon also offers streaming services in the form of Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Music. It's an AI hyperscaler. It has an ad network. It provides supply chain services. It delivers digital and physical care options through One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy. It offers grocery delivery and has a private-label food brand.
And, as we point out in our argument for Amazon as a core stock holding, its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud provider arm is "the straw that stirs the drink." In fact, Amazon believes AWS alone could become a $1 trillion-a-year business.
The argument for AMZN to continue creating wealth over the long term is not just these divisions, but Amazon's ability and willingness to either build out or acquire its way to new lines of business (or drastically expand its existing businesses). In just the past few years, for instance, Amazon has purchased autonomous driving technology firm Zoox, entertainment company MGM Studios, the aforementioned One Medical and satellite telecommunications firm Globalstar.
Despite its frequent spending, AMZN still sits on $122 billion in cash and short-term investments and a similar sum of long-term investments. It doesn't pay a dividend and it infrequently repurchases stock. But as long as Amazon has no compunction about plowing money into growth, it could continue to expand the wealth you hope to eventually leave to your heirs.
Nvidia
- Sector: Technology
- Market value: $5.25 trillion
- Lifetime wealth creation: $4.6 trillion
- Percent of market total: 5.03%
Nvidia (NVDA) is the No. 2 wealth creator of the past 100 years, producing $4.6 trillion in excess of a Treasury-bill benchmark since the chipmaker came public in 1999.
Just about everyone reading this knows why this tech stock has done so well in recent years: its role in the expansion of artificial intelligence.
"We believe the NVDA shares have much further to go and believe that most technology investors should own NVDA in the age of AI and GPU-driven applications acceleration," says Argus Research analyst Jim Kelleher, who rates shares at Buy. "We recommend establishing or adding to positions in this preeminent vehicle for participation in the AI economy."
The unfettered growth of artificial intelligence isn't a slam dunk by any means. Public opinion has turned sharply negative on both AI and especially the data centers popping up to propel the technology. And among AI-related stocks, few are more tightly tethered to the technology than Nvidia.
But the reason to be optimistic about Nvidia is everything else the chipmaker is involved in: gaming, graphics, traditional data centers, cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, climate forecasting, genomic sequencing and much, much more. As long as people need technology broadly, what Nvidia produces seems likely to be in demand.
Nvidia also has nearly $100 billion in cash and investments that it could put to work if needed. And it churns out tens of billions of dollars in free cash flow every year.
NVDA has stepped up stock repurchases drastically in the past couple of years, accelerating from nearly $2 billion in 2021 to $12 billion in 2023 and $48 billion in 2025. And while its 25-cent-per-share dividend comes out to just half a percent in yield, that dividend is 25 times what it was a year ago, and Nvidia has a world of room to expand it further.
Apple
- Sector: Technology
- Market value: $4.5 trillion
- Lifetime wealth creation: $5.0 trillion
- Percent of market total: 5.52%
Last on our list but first among wealth creators of the past 100 years, Apple (AAPL) appears likely to continue delivering far better returns than we could get from T-bills.
Apple has been one of the greatest growth stocks of the past few decades because of its ability to create category-defining devices like the iPod, iPad and iPhone.
But the reason why we can likely count on Apple to continue doing so is that the company has historically never been a first mover. Instead, it takes emerging technologies and perfects them.
The Macintosh wasn't the first personal computer, but it popularized personal computing thanks to its all-in-one design, graphical interface and mouse. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, but its massive storage and simple user interface made it a hit. The iPhone came after the likes of the BlackBerry and Palm Treo, but it became a dominant smartphone thanks to its touchscreen, web browsing and App Store.
Incredibly, the vast majority of Apple's wealth was created after the 2011 death of Steve Jobs. His replacement, Tim Cook, was less a product innovator and more of an operations and supply chain specialist who also understood the potential of services. Cook himself stepped down in September 2026, and was replaced by John Ternus, who helped oversee the development of the iPad, AirPods and Apple Watch, among other projects — but Cook will retain an important role with the company.
"Mr. Ternus, a 25-year Apple executive that joined Apple three years after Mr. Cook, has been an important part of Apple product launches for over two decades, and promoting him to CEO clearly shows Apple's emphasis on product at the center of the flywheel will remain," says Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring (Overweight, equivalent of Buy). "Tim Cook remaining Executive Chairman and 'engaging with policymakers around the world' shows Tim will remain a critical conduit between Apple and political leaders around the world, a role Mr. Cook has excelled at."
From a financial standpoint, Apple boasts many of the same advantages as the other wealth-building stocks on this list. It has $62 billion in cash and short-term investments and an additional $84 billion in long-term investments that it can use for transformational acquisitions.
It's also a cash-flow machine that has been repurchasing $80 billion and $100 billion in AAPL shares every year since 2021. The dividend has also grown every year since 2012.
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