Ten years ago, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner selected five low-risk stocks specifically designed to beat the market over the following year.
Those five picks were Apple (AAPL), Canadian National Railway (CNI), Walt Disney (DIS), Ecolab (ECL), and Alphabet, and each carried one of the lowest risk ratings in Gardner’s investing universe.
Gardner and longtime Motley Fool analyst Rick Munarriz recently revisited those picks on the Rule Breaker Investing podcast, recorded on September 9, 2026, to assess what the decade actually taught investors.
The market benchmark they are competing against is formidable, with the S&P 500 ETF delivering a total return of plus 251.7% over the same ten-year span.
Apple emerged as the runaway winner, climbing from $27.09 per share to $319.97, an 1,081% gain representing roughly 829 percentage points of outperformance against the index.
Munarriz credited two words for Apple’s extraordinary run: “Tim Cook,” noting that Cook’s relentless focus on operational execution drove gross margin expansion for seven consecutive fiscal years.
“Jobs equals dreamer, Cook equals executioner, and I mean that in a good way,” Munarriz said, adding that Apple successfully transformed from a pure product company into a powerful and sticky services business.
Canadian National Railway (CNI) told a very different story, rising from $65.05 to $123.37, a gain of just 90% that left it roughly 162 percentage points behind the broader market.
Munarriz described it as a “tale of two halves,” with solid early performance undermined by pandemic disruption, a failed bid for Kansas City Southern, and a subsequent loss of momentum that weighed on the stock for years.
Walt Disney (DIS) proved to be the most disappointing performer of the group, climbing only from $93.71 to $105.31 over ten years, a gain of roughly 12% against the market’s 252% return.
Munarriz pointed to four CEO tenures across the decade, including two stints by Bob Iger, as a key factor that prevented investors from gaining confidence in the company’s long-term direction.
“Usually does not work out well for investors when you have a spinal tap drummer rotation in your CEO office,” Munarriz said, even while acknowledging that Disney’s underlying businesses have continued to perform well operationally.
Despite Disney producing the only three films globally to cross $1 billion at the box office in both 2024 and 2025, the stock never recovered the valuation premium it once commanded with investors.
Ecolab (ECL) delivered a gain of approximately 128%, rising from $122.74 to $279.28, but that still left it more than 124 percentage points behind the market average over the decade.
Munarriz highlighted that Ecolab has undergone perhaps the biggest transformation of the five companies, pivoting away from oil and gas exposure entirely and moving into water technology, semiconductor manufacturing support, and data center cooling systems.
The company acquired a life sciences solutions business five years ago, then last year purchased a producer of ultrapure water for semiconductor fabrication, and this past summer added a firm specializing in cooling systems for data centers.
Munarriz noted that Ecolab’s high-tech business segment is expected to grow from $1.5 billion in annual revenue this year to $4 billion by 2030, a trajectory that could meaningfully shift the growth story for a company with trailing revenue of just under $17 billion.
Gardner reflected that the Apple experience offers a lasting lesson for investors, noting that the stock had underperformed the market over the prior one, two, and five years before he selected it, yet went on to become an eleven-bagger.
“I don’t think there’s ever a bad time to buy and just keep adding and holding over time” when it comes to truly great companies, Gardner said, framing the decade-long review as a reminder that patience and conviction in quality businesses remains a core Rule Breaker principle.
