3 Stocks I'm Keeping Forever — Even If the
Market Crashes Tomorrow
Category: US Stock Market | Stock Market News | Wall Street News Reading Time: 8 minutes
My uncle lost everything in 2008.
Not because he picked bad companies. He actually owned pretty solid stuff. He lost everything because he panicked. The market crashed, the news was terrifying, and he sold everything in one week. Three months later the market started recovering. He missed the entire rebound and spent the next five years trying to rebuild from scratch.
I think about him every single time the market gets scary. And right now, with all the noise around US Stock Market volatility, Dow Jones swings, and people arguing about AI Stocks and recession fears — the temptation to panic is real.
But here's what I've decided. There are three stocks I will not sell. Not in a crash. Not in a recession. Not if interest rates go crazy. Not for the next 20 years.
And I want to tell you exactly why — not in complicated Wall Street language, but like I'm talking to you over coffee.
The three stocks are Enbridge, Procter & Gamble, and IBM. And before you say "those sound boring" — stay with me. Because boring, done right, is how you actually build wealth.
Why I Even Think About Stocks This Way
Most people who watch Stock Market News think about stocks the wrong way. They think about price. They check it every day. They get nervous when it goes down. They get excited when it goes up. And they make decisions based on what the market is doing right now instead of what the company will look like in ten or twenty years.
I used to do that too, honestly.
Then I started asking a different question. Instead of "what is this stock doing today?" I started asking "will this company still matter in 2040?"
That question changes everything. It removes the noise. It removes the panic. And it leads you toward a completely different kind of company — the kind that quietly pays you dividends every quarter, grows a little every year, and keeps on running no matter what happens in the broader Stock Market Trends cycle.
Enbridge, P&G, and IBM answered that question for me. Here's how.
Stock #1: Enbridge — The World Needs Energy, Period
Let me start with Enbridge because this one surprises people the most.
Enbridge is a midstream energy company. That means it doesn't drill for oil or gas. It owns the pipes, the infrastructure, the highways that move energy from one place to another. Think of it like owning the toll road, not the car. It doesn't matter what the price of oil does on any given day — Enbridge charges a fee every time energy moves through its pipes. That's the business.
The dividend yield right now is 5.4%. And the dividend has gone up every single year for 31 consecutive years. Every. Single. Year. Through recessions. Through oil price crashes. Through a global pandemic. The dividend just kept going up.
Now here's the thing that really convinced me. Enbridge's goal isn't just to be a great midstream company. Their stated goal is to give the world the energy it needs — whatever form that energy takes.
That's a subtle but really important difference.
Because the world is changing. Clean energy is growing. Renewables are expanding. And a company that defines itself as "we move oil forever" is going to have a problem eventually. But a company that says "we provide the world with the energy it needs, period" — that company can evolve. And Enbridge is already doing exactly that. They have natural gas utility assets and a growing portfolio of clean energy projects alongside their traditional midstream business.
They're not waiting for the world to change and then scrambling. They're changing with it, ahead of time.
For a long-term dividend investor watching US Economy News and thinking about the next two decades, that kind of adaptability is priceless. I don't need Enbridge to be the most exciting stock on the Nasdaq. I just need it to still be around and still paying me in 2044. Based on everything I see, it will be.
Stock #2: Procter & Gamble — Boring Is Beautiful
Okay, I'll be honest. When I first bought Procter & Gamble, my younger cousin literally laughed at me.
"You bought P&G? Bro, that's a toothpaste company. Where's the excitement?"
I told him — I don't want excitement. I want reliability.
P&G is what's called a Dividend King. That means it has raised its dividend every single year for more than 50 consecutive years. Over five decades. Think about everything that happened in those 50 years. Multiple recessions. The dot-com crash. 9/11. The 2008 financial crisis. Covid. Wars. Political chaos. Through all of it, P&G raised its dividend. Every year. Without fail.
How? Because they make things you cannot stop buying.
Toilet paper. Toothpaste. Laundry detergent. Shampoo. Dish soap. These are not luxury items. These are not things people cut back on when the economy gets tough. Nobody in the history of the United States has ever said "you know what, there's a recession going on, I think I'll stop washing my clothes."
That's the beauty of consumer staples. They're recession-proof almost by definition. And P&G doesn't just exist in this space — it leads it. Brands like Tide, Gillette, Pampers, Oral-B, Head & Shoulders. These are brands people are loyal to, sometimes for their entire lives.
But here's what really sets P&G apart from other consumer staples companies. They don't just sell the same stuff year after year and hope it keeps working. They invest heavily in innovation. They're always developing improved formulas, new products, smarter packaging. They think like a tech company in terms of research and development, but they sell things everyone needs.
This makes P&G incredibly important to retailers too. Every grocery store, every pharmacy, every big box retailer knows that stocking P&G products brings customers in. The relationship is almost the other way around — retailers need P&G more than P&G needs them. That's incredible pricing power and shelf space security for decades to come.
The dividend yield is nearly 3% right now. For P&G historically, that's actually on the higher end. Which means if you're buying this stock, you're getting in at a relatively good value point compared to where P&G usually trades.
My cousin, by the way, has been watching Artificial Intelligence Stocks and Tech Stocks chase their way up and down for the past three years. His portfolio looks like a roller coaster graph. Mine looks like a steady hill going up. We don't talk about stocks much anymore.
Stock #3: IBM — The 100-Year-Old Company That Keeps Reinventing Itself
IBM is over 100 years old. Let that sink in for a second.
You know what IBM made when it first started? Scales. Like, weighing scales. And punch card machines. And typewriters. This company that is now one of the biggest players in cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence Stocks started its life making office equipment in the early 1900s.
The fact that IBM still exists — and not just exists, but is genuinely relevant and growing in fields like AI, quantum computing, and cloud services — is almost miraculous. And it's not luck. It's because IBM has the rare ability to completely reinvent itself when the world changes.
Every decade or so, IBM looks around, sees where technology is heading, and makes a hard pivot. The most recent big move was a few years ago when IBM sold off older consulting businesses to focus entirely on cloud computing and hybrid cloud solutions. And to make that move seriously, they spent $34 billion — yes, billion with a B — to acquire a company called Red Hat. That's one of the biggest tech acquisitions in history.
I actually bought IBM before all that happened. I bought it during the messy transition period when everyone was complaining that IBM was slow, old, and losing relevance. The Dow Jones crowds had written it off. The Tech Stocks crowd didn't even consider it worth talking about.
But I believed IBM would do what it had always done — adapt. And it did.
Now IBM is a serious player in the AI conversation. Not in the consumer AI space that gets all the headlines, but in the enterprise AI space — the business tools that large companies use to process data, run operations, and make smarter decisions. That market is enormous and growing fast. And IBM, with over a century of relationships with corporate clients around the world, is very well positioned in it.
The dividend has been growing for decades. The yield is 2.6% right now. And the business is more focused and forward-looking than it has been in years.
What gives me confidence is the track record. Scales to punch cards to mainframes to personal computing to consulting to cloud to AI. Every time the world changed, IBM changed with it. I have no reason to believe that stops now.
What These Three Companies Have In Common
Here's the thing. Enbridge, P&G, and IBM look nothing like each other on the surface. One moves energy. One makes soap. One sells cloud computing to corporations. They operate in completely different industries. They serve completely different customers.
But they share one quality that I think is the most important quality a long-term stock can have.
They all know how to change.
Enbridge is shifting toward clean energy while keeping its core infrastructure business strong. P&G constantly innovates while selling the exact same product categories it always has. IBM reinvents its technology business every decade while keeping its deep corporate relationships intact.
Change scares most investors. New technologies, shifting markets, changing regulations — all of that makes people nervous about the companies they own. But the right response isn't to avoid companies that have to change. It's to own companies that are great at changing. Because in 20 years, every industry will look different. The companies that survive and thrive will be the ones that figured out how to adapt.
A Word About Dividends and Why They Matter More Than You Think
All three of these stocks pay dividends. And I want to talk about that for a second because I think dividends are genuinely underappreciated — especially when you're watching the excitement around AI Stocks and Nasdaq Stocks.
Dividends are your paycheck for owning a business. While everyone else is debating whether some hot tech stock will go up or down next quarter, dividend investors are quietly getting paid every three months. No stress. No timing the market. Just income.
Over long periods of time, dividend reinvestment is one of the most powerful wealth-building tools that exists. When you take those quarterly payments and buy more shares, and those shares pay more dividends, and you buy more shares with that — it compounds. Slowly at first. Then faster. And after 20 years it becomes something that genuinely surprises you.
This is not the flashy Stock Market News story. This is not going viral on social media. But it works. Quietly and steadily, it works.
Why I'm Not Scared of Market Crashes Anymore
I want to come back to my uncle for a second.
The mistake he made wasn't owning the wrong companies. It was not understanding what he actually owned. He saw "stock prices falling" and got scared. He didn't stop to ask "are these good companies with strong businesses that will survive this?" He just saw the number go down and panicked.
When you own companies like Enbridge, P&G, and IBM — companies with strong dividends, long histories, and the ability to adapt — a market crash is just noise. It doesn't change the fact that people still need energy. It doesn't change the fact that you still need toothpaste. It doesn't change the fact that large corporations still need IBM's cloud services.
The price drops. The business keeps running. The dividends keep coming. And if anything, a crash is just an opportunity to buy more at a lower price.
That mindset shift — from watching prices to understanding businesses — is what separates investors who build real wealth from the ones who keep getting shaken out at the worst moments.
If you're reading Stock Market News every day and making decisions based on what the S&P 500 did yesterday, I understand. I used to do the same thing. But at some point, finding two or three or five companies you genuinely believe in for the long term — and then just holding — becomes the most powerful thing you can do.
Final Thought
20 years from now, someone is going to need energy. Someone is going to buy toothpaste. Some corporation is going to need enterprise technology solutions.
Enbridge, Procter & Gamble, and IBM have been around long enough and adapted well enough that I genuinely believe they'll be the ones providing those things.
That's all I need to know. I'm not selling.
DISCLAIMER:
This blog is written for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this article should be taken as financial advice, investment advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any stock. Stock investing involves risk and you may lose money. The stocks mentioned — Enbridge (ENB), Procter & Gamble (PG), and IBM — are discussed based on publicly available information and the author's personal perspective only. Always do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Past dividend history and company performance does not guarantee future results.
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