[throwmeme888]

this is a common misconception, which I think arises from the ideas of index investing. one must remember that while the index itself increases over time, many of the names on the index in eg the year 2000 simply don't exist anymore; consider companies like Kodak Eastman

if you held all of the energy drink companies including a placement into monster for 25+ years you would indeed make money on the 1-2 winners and end up net ahead.

But if you missed monster, you could very easily have just bought a basket of dog companies that all completely fail and the money is gone

[dharmab]

Or Monster could have been out-competed by Red Bull or Rockstar, which never went public, or by the incumbent PepsiCo.