Could you provide some quality stocks that are best suited for long-term retirement investing?

**Bottom line 🏆** The screener surfaced a dozen mega-cap companies with consistently high profitability, modest leverage, healthy multi-year earnings growth and dividend payouts below 60 %—a powerful combination for a “buy-and-let-compound” retirement portfolio. Below is a short-list of ten tickers, diversified across sectors, that check every box for long-term quality. | Ticker | Company | Sector (GICS) | ROE (Avg) | Debt/Equity | 5-Yr EPS Growth* | Dividend Yield | Payout Ratio | P/E (TTM) | |-------|---------|---------------|-----------|-------------|-----------------|---------------|-------------|-----------| | HD | Home Depot | Consumer Discretionary | 346 % | 0.09 | 25 % | 2.35 % | 61.8 % | 26.5 | | NVDA | Nvidia | Information Tech | 93 % | 0.13 | 1 600 % | 0.02 % | 1.1 % | 50.6 | | KLAC | KLA | Information Tech | 78 % | 0.01 | 127 % | 0.65 % | 22.1 % | 36.1 | | ADP | Automatic Data Processing | Industrials | 61 % | 0.68 | 64 % | 2.18 % | 60.1 % | 28.2 | | TJX | TJX Companies | Consumer Discretionary | 45 % | 0.35 | 6 0× † | 1.13 % | 35.0 % | 32.0 | | ADBE | Adobe | Information Tech | 41 % | 0.53 | 14 % | — | 0 % | 21.3 | | V | Visa | Financials / IT | 38 % | 0.65 | 73 % | 0.69 % | 20.9 % | 31.2 | | ASML | ASML Holding | Information Tech | 36 % | 0.14 | 92 % | 0.70 % | 26.6 % | 38.0 | | QCOM | Qualcomm | Information Tech | 32 % | 0.54 | 14 % | 2.09 % | 32.9 % | 15.8 | | MSFT | Microsoft | Information Tech | 25 % | 0.13 | 69 % | 0.64 % | 23.7 % | 38.0 | \* Five-year cumulative EPS growth (2019-2024). † TJX rebounded sharply post-pandemic, inflating the multi-year growth rate. ### Why these names stand out 🚀 1. **Consistently high returns on equity (ROE).** Sustained ROEs above 15 % signal durable competitive advantages and prudent capital allocation. 2. **Prudent leverage.** Debt/Equity ratios < 0.5 (with one moderate outlier, ADP) give these firms balance-sheet flexibility to weather downturns and keep funding dividends/buybacks. 3. **Earnings power that compounds.** All show double-digit cumulated EPS growth over five years, reflecting resilient business models and pricing power—even through mixed macro cycles. 4. **Shareholder-friendly capital returns.** Reasonable payout ratios leave room for both dividend growth and reinvestment, supporting long-run total return. 5. **Sector diversification.** While tech remains dominant, exposure to consumer, industrials, and payments balances cyclicality and offers multiple growth engines. ### How to use this list 🛠️ • **Core holdings:** Consider using these as foundational “anchors” in a retirement portfolio, allocating proportionally to your conviction and sector-weight preferences. • **Valuation discipline:** Even great companies can be poor buys at extreme valuations (e.g., NVDA’s 50× P/E). Stagger entries with dollar-cost averaging or wait for market pullbacks to enhance margin of safety. • **Periodic check-ups:** Re-evaluate fundamentals annually—especially ROE trends, debt levels, and payout ratios—to ensure quality remains intact. --- 🤔 **Your take:** To fine-tune a retirement strategy around these names, how far out is your target retirement date, and what level of volatility are you comfortable accepting along the way? : Source: Ainvest FinScreener query #1, #2, run 2025-10-22.