One of the simplest, yet most effective, investment strategies is the buy and hold strategy.
The strategy involves buying shares in quality companies with solid growth prospects and holding onto them indefinitely unless something fundamentally changes with the business or the thesis.
It's a strategy that has been used by legendary investor Warren Buffett for decades. And considering the returns he has generated, I feel it is reasonably safe to say that it is a strategy that works.
Two shares which I think would be great long-term buy and hold investments are listed below. Here's why I like them:
Appen Ltd (ASX: APX)
This data solutions and services company is a global leader in the development of high-quality, human annotated datasets for machine learning and artificial intelligence. With many of the world's biggest tech companies such as Facebook and Microsoft amongst its client base, I feel it is a testament to the quality of the company and its services.
I expect machine learning and artificial intelligence use to grow exponentially over the next decade, putting Appen in a great position to deliver strong long-term earnings growth. This could make it a great buy and hold investment option, even after its stellar share price run this year.
Nextdc Ltd (ASX: NXT)
Thanks to the mass migration to cloud services I believe data centre operators are in a great position to profit, and none more so than NEXTDC. After all, this leading data centre operator has some of the highest quality and most efficient data centres in Australia.
As the company has been experiencing increasingly strong demand for its services, it has invested heavily to build its capacity in FY 2018. While this is expected to result in softer growth this year, in FY 2019 I expect the company will reap the rewards of its investments.