Voya Corporate Leaders Trust – The Virtue Of Sloth

Ever wondered what might happen if you just bought some leading stocks,once only ,early in your life,and simply held onto them for a life-time ? Generally practiced sloth? Arousing yourself perhaps only if a company went bankrupt or stopped dividends ?

Then here is a story for you :

In 1935 Voya Corporate Leaders Trust bought the shares of the following then leading American Stocks:

1. Allied Chemical & Dye
2. American Can Company
3. American Radiator & Standard Sanitary
4. American Telephone & Telegraph
5. Columbia Gas & Electric
6. Consolidated Gas Company of New York
7. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company
8. Eastman Kodak Company
9. W. Woolworth Company
10. General Electric
11. International Harvester
12. National Biscuit
13. Otis Elevator
14. Pacific Gas & Electric Company
15. Sears, Roebuck & Company
16. Socony-Vacuum Oil Company
17. Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)
18. Standard Oil Company of California
19. The American Tobacco Company
20. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway
21. The Borden Company
22. The New York Central Railroad Company
23. The North American Company
24. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company
25. The Procter & Gamble Company
26. The United Gas Improvement Company
27. Union Carbide & Carbon
28. Union Pacific Railroad Company
29. United States Steel
30. Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing

Eight decades later,they are left with the 23 scripts below:

1.  Ameren Corp.
2. AT&T, Inc.
3. Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. Class B
4. CBS Corp. – Class B
5. Chevron Corp.
6. Comcast Corp. Class A
7. Consolidated Edison, Inc.
8. Corteva, Inc.
9. Dow, Inc.
10. DuPont, Inc.
11. Exxon Mobil Corp.
12.  Foot Locker, Inc.
13. Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc.
14. General Electric Co.
15. Honeywell International, Inc.
16. Linde Public Ltd.
17. Marathon Oil Corp.
18. Marathon Petroleum Corp.
19. NiSource, Inc.
20. Procter & Gamble Co.
21. Union Pacific Corp.
22. United States Treasury Bill
23. Viacom, Inc. – Class B

The only common names in the 2 lists are Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Du Pont, and Union Pacific.The rest are from acquisitions,spin-offs and mergers.Some like the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. are gone.

So overall,not a bad portfolio at all.

Hyperactivity  rather than sloth tends to be more destructive of wealth.