Image Source: UnsplashLast weekend’s Barron’s featured an article citing the fascinating results of a study from Arizona State professor Hendrik Bessembinder. In a recent paper, Bessembinder studied the performance of more than 29,000 stocks from 1925 through 2023, and he found that most stocks lost money over time and that a small number of stocks are responsible for the majority of the market’s long-term gains.Looking back at stocks with a minimum of 20 years of returns, the study found that Nvidia (NVDA) had the greatest annualized compound return, which should surprise no one. Looking further back, though, of the stocks that have been around since 1925, the three with the biggest gains were Altria (MO), Vulcan Materials (VMC), and Kansas City Southern.All three have generated annualized gains of over 14% (table provided below is from the paper). When you think of the market’s biggest winners over the last 100 years, would you have ever guessed the trio would include a tobacco company, an asphalt company, and a railroad?It’s hard to imagine a sector of the economy that has been more out of favor in recent decades than tobacco. Given its addictive nature and how popular it was for most of the last 100 years, though, Altria’s strength makes more sense.When it comes to Vulcan, it doesn’t get less sexy than asphalt. Still, as the auto industry exploded over the last century, especially after WWII, and more Americans moved out of cities and into suburbs, none of it would have been possible without a company like Vulcan laying pavement.Just as networking companies have facilitated the movement of data around the internet since the late 1990s, companies like Vulcan and even Kansas City Southern can, in some ways, be thought of as the networking companies of the physical economy of the 20th century.When the same study is conducted in 2125 looking at the best-performing stocks since 2025, will Nvidia be as exciting as a tobacco or asphalt company is now? If not, which companies of today will end up as the leaders of the next century?More By This Author:Homebuilder Sentiment Improves and a Death Cross NearsSmall Business Expectations Vs. Reality Grid Expansion; Beaten Blues