Well, here we are. In our fantasy, self-kicking portfolio that just-so-happened to invest 100% in each year's best-performing stock, we're at the half-billion mark. Just think how much better off we'd be if our 10-year period began in 1988 and capped off with our 2587% rally in Qualcomm! I guess we'll have to settle for a measly $1 billion.... J.K. Rowling is somehow managing to live off a similar fortune.

Here's a review of all the previous steps we took to get to $1 billion:

1997: Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO)
1998: Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN)
1999: Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM)
2000: Laboratory Corp. of America (NYSE: LH)
2001: NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA)
2002: MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE: WHR)
2003: Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM)
2004: Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD)
2005: SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK)

In 2006, the top stock was Akamai Technologies (again!), but for the sake of variety, we'll look at the first runner-up, Pittsburgh-based steel company Allegheny Technologies (NYSE: ATI). Last year, the stock was in the news after paying $17 million to acquire Garryson Limited from Elliott Industries. At the beginning of 2006, ATI was trading at $36.40. With the dollars in our portfolio, we purchased 12,332,536 shares to hold on to through the end of the year.



Outperformance in the base-metals sector and a strong final quarter helped lift ATI shares to $90.68, closing 2006 with a 149% gain. Lo and behold, our fantasy portfolio stood at $1,118,314,364. More than $1 billion in just 10 years.

As I said at the beginning of this exercise, it's an incredible stroke of good fortune to invest in the best-performing stock of a single year, let alone for 10 years running. So while nothing is impossible, the actions performed by this portfolio come pretty darn close. Still, it's a fun experiment to see that aggressive money management and picture-perfect stock selections can result in massive portfolio growth.

Thanks for reading! Now go figure out what the top stock of 2008 will be and shoot me an email.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Seeking your own fortune? See Georges Yared's 25 stocks for the NEXT 25 years

10 years to $1 billion - How it was technically (if not logically) possible
Step 1: Yahoo! (YHOO), 1997
Step 2: Amazon.com (AMZN), 1998
Step 3: Qualcomm (QCOM), 1999
Step 4: LabCorp. of America (LH), 2000
Step 5: NVIDIA (NVDA), 2001
Step 6: MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR), 2002
Step 7: Akamai Technologies (AKAM), 2003
Step 8: Sears Holdings (SHLD), 2004
Step 9: SanDisk (SNDK), 2005
Step 10: Allegheny Technologies (ATI), 2006