How the biggest companies are the worst investments

There is a belief among conservative retail investors that the largest publicly listed companies produce the most reliable returns.

They got to the top by ruling their market and have plenty of cash – so it makes sense, right? The cliché “too big to fail” comes to mind.

Paul Moore, chief investment officer at Sydney’s PM Capital, has now shattered that theory.

Moore this week compared the top 10 biggest companies by market capitalisation at the turn of each decade since the 1980s. And he found the turnover in the club mind-blowing.

“It is rare for a stock to be in the top 10 at the start of one decade and to still be there at the start of the next decade ten years later,” he said on Livewire.

“For example, in 1990…