Investing in Your 20s: 3 Stocks to Watch

The big takeaway from the chart above is that buy-to-hold investors enjoyed strong performance if they bought into the market at any point over the last half-century, but the sooner you began investing, the better. If you were 20 years old in 1980, starting to invest that year would have made you far wealthier than if you saved your money in a bank account and then started buying stocks when you were 40. Whether you're already buying stocks or just starting to survey the market, keeping track of influential companies will help you stay up to date on influential trends and potentially lucrative trades.