Our experienced private investor highlights six stocks he is happy to hold in his portfolio for the long term. : Compiling such a list makes for an interesting challenge right now. Irrespective of volatile politics, we are on the cusp of great technological changes including smart towns, self-driving cars, drone deliveries, remote medicine and surgery, augmented and virtual reality, holographic video calls and myriads more, as yet unheard of. A ‘forever’ stock may seem an anachronism in a world where the average holding period for a share is 11 seconds, thanks to high frequency trading.