The ten names ranked 20th to 11st in Part I, plus Deere, which is used as the opening illustration here and returns at #2 in Part II. All are marked Positive because each carries an argued durability case, but note the caveat: this is an "own for the very long run" list with no price attached to any name. Marcus Aurelius, the bicycle and Lindy's Delicatessen are analogies, not securities. Research legend: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. Written post with no timestamps — the At link opens the article.
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What he said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCD | McDonald's | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #20. Founded 1955, IPO 1965. "The corporation owns the underlying real estate and collects rent and franchise fees from operators… McDonald's is essentially a real estate company that collects rent and royalties." The Lindy case: "Food is a fundamental human need that isn't going anywhere," plus global brand and scale. Total return more than 6,000% since 1990. Ray Kroc's 1955 company was built on the McDonald brothers' 1940 restaurant. | read ↗ |
| MAR | Marriott International | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #19. Founded 1927, IPO 1993. The asset-light franchise argument: "Independent operators own the physical buildings while Marriott provides the operating systems… Marriott earns fees without owning most of its hotels." Lindy case: "Hotels have been around for thousands of years (travelers will always need a place to stay)," with brands and the loyalty programme as the retention mechanism. Over +10,000% since its 1993 IPO. The origin is a root-beer stand in Washington, D.C. | read ↗ |
| DIS | Walt Disney | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #18. Founded 1923, IPO 1957 — and the one entry that admits a poor recent record. "It owns the IP rights to iconic characters and stories like Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, and Star Wars." Lindy case: "The human desire for great stories will never go away," with brand and cultural importance giving pricing power across the businesses. But: "Disney's stock has been relatively flat over the past decade. But since 1990, it's up more than 1,300%" — the weakest ten-year record on the list and a useful check on the thesis, since survival plainly did not prevent a lost decade. | read ↗ |
| MCO | Moody's | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #17. Founded 1909, spun off in its current form in 2000. The oligopoly/trust argument this archive has made before — "The financial system depends on credit ratings. Only a few companies dominate this market. It would be very hard for a competitor to gain the trust Moody's has." Up more than 6,000% since the 2000 spin-off, the best post-listing record on this half of the list. Previously named only as the third member of the ratings oligopoly behind the S&P Global case; here it is argued in its own right. | read ↗ |
| BAC | Bank of America | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #16. Founded 1904, IPO 1979 — and the only bank on the list. "People will always need a safe place to keep their money. Bank of America's scale gives them a huge low-cost deposit base. Changing banks is a pain, creating switching costs, and strict regulations protect BoA from competition." Total return more than 1,300% since 1990, tied with Disney for the weakest on this half. Founded as the Bank of Italy in San Francisco to serve working-class immigrants; renamed in 1930. Regulation is presented here as a moat rather than a cost — the opposite of how banks are usually treated in this archive. | read ↗ |
| MMM | 3M | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #15. Founded 1902, IPO 1970. "3M makes thousands of specialized industrial and consumer materials and adhesives… Its products are built into thousands of supply chains. Years of innovation and research make 3M difficult to replace." Total return over 2,600% since 1990. The company began as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, formed to mine corundum, and "quickly pivoted" — the list's clearest example of survival through complete reinvention. The litigation history that has dominated the last few years is not mentioned. | read ↗ |
| PEP | PepsiCo | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #14. Founded 1898, IPO 1978. "PepsiCo owns a portfolio of popular snack and beverage brands like Doritos, Frito-Lay, Pepsi, and Lipton… Its distribution network is almost impossible to match." Nearly 3,100% since 1990. The modern company dates from the 1965 Frito-Lay merger, which is what made it a snacks business rather than a soft-drinks one. The GLP-1 demand question hanging over packaged food elsewhere in this research hub is not raised. | read ↗ |
| JNJ | Johnson & Johnson | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #13. Founded 1886, IPO 1944 — the best absolute record in Part I. "People will always need healthcare. It sells products that hospitals and patients depend on. Its size allows it to keep developing new medicines and products." Total return 8,000% since 1990. Began as a maker of sterile surgical dressings. One of only six companies in the S&P 500's top twenty in both 2005 and 2026, a fact used in the 13 August issue. | read ↗ |
| PPG | PPG Industries | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #12. Founded 1883, IPO 1983 — and the only entry given a CAGR rather than just a total. "PPG makes specialized industrial paints and coatings. Aerospace and automotive manufacturers use these products to protect their equipment… Customers rarely switch because failure is expensive." Compounded at 9.7% per year since 1990, a total return above 2,800%. The switching-cost logic is identical to the Diploma argument two days earlier: a small, specified input whose failure is expensive. | read ↗ |
| CVX | Chevron | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #11. Founded 1879, IPO 1921 — the oldest name in Part I and the archive's first energy major. "They're vertically integrated, meaning they control the entire chain from the wellhead to the gas station… Its vertical integration and huge scale keep it profitable through commodity cycles. Chevron's infrastructure would be almost impossible to recreate today." Total return 4,000% since 1990. Descended from Pacific Coast Oil via Standard Oil of California. Notable as the only cyclical commodity producer on a list otherwise built from tolls, brands and distribution networks. | read ↗ |
| DE | Deere & Company | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The worked example that opens the issue; ranked #2 in Part II. "It's a Lindy business that has been around since 1837 (!). It began when a blacksmith named John Deere made a polished steel plow from a broken sawblade. The basics of farming haven't changed in thousands of years. That means Deere's expertise, brand, and reputation have been growing for nearly 200 years. Now, they are a global giant making GPS-guided, autonomous tractors. And they still make plows." The inference is the issue's whole argument: "If a business has survived 189 years of wars, recessions, and technological change… the Lindy Effect suggests it is likely to survive another 189 years." | read ↗ |
Two things to carry forward. (1) The Lindy claim is a statement about the denominator of a discounted cash-flow calculation — a longer expected life adds terminal value — which makes it a valuation argument disguised as a history lesson. It is also the one argument that cannot be falsified in advance. (2) Disney's flat decade and Bank of America's 1,300% both sit inside the list, which is honest: survival is not the same as compounding, and this issue never claims a price at which any of these is worth owning.
A jargon-free summary of the thesis behind each argued name. (Renders on each name's consolidated page.)
Most people think of McDonald's as a burger chain. Financially it is closer to a landlord. The company owns the land and buildings under thousands of its restaurants, and the people who actually run those restaurants pay it rent plus a share of sales. That means its income does not depend on how profitable any individual outlet is, only on how much it sells.
The durability argument is simple: people have always eaten out and always will, and the combination of the world's most recognised fast-food brand with a property portfolio built up over seventy years is not something a competitor can assemble. The record cited is a total return above 6,000% since 1990. No price or valuation is offered — this is a case for owning the business for decades, not a call on the shares today.
Marriott mostly does not own hotels. It owns the brands — Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott and the rest — plus the booking systems and the loyalty programme, and it licenses all of that to the people who do own the buildings, taking a fee on the revenue. Owning the name rather than the bricks means very little capital is tied up, so a large share of the fee income is genuine profit.
Travellers have needed somewhere to sleep for as long as there has been travel, and the loyalty scheme is what keeps them choosing the same brand. Since the company listed in 1993, shareholders have made more than 10,000%. Again, no valuation is given here.
Disney owns stories and characters — Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, Star Wars — and sells them repeatedly through films, television, streaming, merchandise and theme parks. The same asset gets monetised many times over decades, which is why the intellectual property, not the studio, is the business.
This is also the entry that undercuts its own thesis most usefully. The post admits the shares have gone essentially nowhere for ten years, even though the total return since 1990 is above 1,300%. Surviving and prospering are not the same thing: Disney has clearly done the first, and the last decade shows what that is worth on its own. Read it as the honest control case in the list.
Moody's grades debt. When a company or a government wants to borrow, investors want an independent verdict on how likely they are to be repaid, and Moody's supplies that grade for a fee. It has been doing so since 1909, and only two or three firms in the world are trusted to do it at all.
That trust is the whole moat, and it is the one thing a well-funded newcomer cannot buy: an unknown rating agency's opinion is worthless by definition, because the point of the rating is that everybody already accepts it. The shares are up more than 6,000% since the business was separated out in 2000 — the strongest post-listing record in this half of the list. Elsewhere in this archive Moody's appears only as the third name in the ratings oligopoly behind S&P Global; here it is argued in its own right.
Bank of America takes in deposits from tens of millions of ordinary customers and lends that money out at a higher rate. The profit is the difference, and the key variable is how cheaply the deposits are obtained — which is a question of scale and inertia rather than skill.
Three durability arguments are given: people always need somewhere safe to keep money; the sheer size of the deposit base makes it a low-cost source of funding no newcomer can match; and moving your bank account is annoying enough that most people never do. Unusually, regulation is presented as protection rather than burden — heavy rules keep new competitors out. The record is the second-weakest here, above 1,300% since 1990, which reflects how badly banks did in the 2008 crisis. That crisis is not discussed.
3M makes thousands of small specialised materials — adhesives, tapes, abrasives, films — that end up as components inside other companies' products and processes. Any one of them is a trivial purchase; collectively they are embedded in thousands of manufacturing lines around the world, and changing a qualified material is a slow, expensive nuisance.
The company's own history is the best argument for the Lindy filter: it was founded in 1902 to mine an abrasive mineral, discovered the deposit was not commercially useful, and reinvented itself as an inventor of industrial products. Surviving 120 years required abandoning the original business entirely. Total return above 2,600% since 1990. The post does not mention the large legal settlements of recent years, which is a material omission for anyone considering the shares now.
PepsiCo sells drinks and snacks — Pepsi and Lipton on one side, Doritos and the rest of Frito-Lay on the other. The snacks half, acquired in a 1965 merger, is the more valuable, because salty snacks are bought on impulse and rarely from a shopping list.
The moat described is not really the brands but the trucks: getting a product onto every convenience-store shelf in the world several times a week is an operation that took decades to build and that a new entrant cannot rent. Shareholders have made close to 3,100% since 1990. The obvious current risk — weight-loss drugs reducing snack consumption, a theme tracked elsewhere in this research hub — is not addressed here.
Johnson & Johnson sells prescription medicines and the devices hospitals use — implants, surgical tools, diagnostics. It started in 1886 making sterile surgical dressings, at a time when the idea that bandages ought to be sterile was itself new.
The durability argument is the least contestable on the list: illness is permanent, hospitals depend on these products daily, and the company is large enough to keep funding the research that replaces expiring patents. That last point is the real mechanism — a drug company's individual products all die, so what survives is the machine that produces new ones. Total return of 8,000% since 1990, the best in this half of the list, and one of only six companies in the S&P 500's twenty largest in both 2005 and 2026.
PPG makes industrial paints and coatings — the finish on an aircraft fuselage, the protective layer on a car body, the coating on a factory floor. These are not decorative products; they are engineered to a specification, and they are what stops expensive metal from corroding.
That gives it the same quiet pricing power described two days earlier for Diploma: the coating is a small part of what the customer spends, but a coating failure on an aeroplane is catastrophic, so nobody switches to save money. It is the only name in this half given a compound rate rather than just a total — 9.7% a year since 1990, or more than 2,800% in all. Steady rather than spectacular, which is the point.
Chevron finds oil and gas, pumps it, refines it and sells the fuel — it owns every step from the well to the petrol pump. Being present at every stage is what lets it stay profitable when the oil price falls, because a low crude price that hurts the production business helps the refining business.
The Lindy argument is that the world will need energy indefinitely and that Chevron's physical infrastructure — pipelines, refineries, terminals, built over 145 years — could not realistically be rebuilt today at any price. Shareholders have made 4,000% since 1990. It is worth noting this is the only genuinely cyclical business on the list, and the only one whose profits depend on a commodity price it does not control, which sits awkwardly with a filter designed to select for predictability.
Deere makes the large machines farmers and builders use: tractors, harvesters, excavators. It has been doing so since 1837, when a blacksmith made a plough with a polished steel blade out of a broken sawblade, because ordinary iron ploughs clogged in the sticky soil of the American Midwest.
It is the example chosen to open the whole Lindy argument, and it illustrates the distinction that matters. Almost nothing about the technology has survived — today's machines are GPS-guided and increasingly drive themselves — but the purpose, the dealer network and the reputation have. The claim drawn from it is deliberately provocative: a business that has come through 189 years of wars, depressions and technological upheaval is likely to see another 189. It returns at number two in the second half of the list.
Summary derived from the archived Compounding Quality post (text in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © Compounding Quality / Pieter Slegers for source material.