Amazon and Microsoft Emerge as Top Long-Term Investment Picks Amid AI Boom

The S&P 500 index fund has produced a compound annual return of 10.7% since its establishment in 1957, but investing in individual stocks can yield higher returns over the long term.

A portfolio of around 50 individual stocks will experience more volatility than the S&P 500, but young investors have time on their side to take on a little more risk.

The two trillion-dollar stocks Amazon and Microsoft are considered great long-term investments due to their strong growth prospects in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI).

Amazon's AI strategy is centered around its AWS cloud platform, which offers hundreds of tools for businesses to thrive in the digital age. The platform has generated $148 billion in revenue over the last four quarters and has a whopping $496 billion order backlog from customers waiting for more data center capacity.