As a buy-and-hold investor, I closely follow my long-term investments through exchange-traded funds and retirement accounts. I’ve always followed a Warren Buffett-style of investing, in which I look for strong, profitable companies to hold over the long term.

However, I also recognize that tech stocks are way too important — and profitable — to miss out on. Tech stocks represent companies that are at the forefront of innovation and development, leading the world’s charge into the future. Without tech companies, we wouldn’t have a host of massively significant advances that we take for granted today — things like personal computers, online banking, 5G wireless service, the internet, smartphones, and GPS technology. Nor would we have the incredible types of tech that companies are still making rapid progress on today — such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, generative AI, and autonomous vehicles.

Including strong, profitable tech stocks in your portfolio is one of the best ways to give yourself an opportunity to outperform the market. Consider that the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is up nearly 18% in the last 12 months, handily outperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500.

Three tech stocks that I think would be great choices for any retail investor’s portfolio are Nvidia (NVDA 1.65%), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM 2.58%), and Meta Platforms (META 2.04%).

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Nvidia

Semiconductor maker Nvidia is the biggest company in the world by market capitalization, so it naturally gets the top position on this list, too. While a recent pullback has driven the market cap from $4.4 trillion down to $4.2 trillion, the tailwinds that have propelled Nvidia’s upward over the last few years are still present — and they won’t be going away any time soon.

Nvidia designs graphics processing units (GPUs) that are used by data centers to provide the computing power required by a host of advanced computing tasks, such as training and running large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Nvidia’s GPUs are designed to be deployed in clusters of hundreds or thousands, boosting the parallel processing power they can apply to workloads. In addition, Nvidia’s CUDA platform provides libraries and tools for developers who are working on software that will be powered by its GPUs. It’s a popular platform with developers, and it’s only compatible with Nvidia’s chips. That added competitive advantage is one reason why I’m confident that it will continue to control the lion’s share of the GPU market for years to come.

Nvidia will release its results for its fiscal 2026 second quarter on Aug. 27, and I think it’s going to be another sterling report. I’ll also be looking carefully at management’s guidance, as the company is expected to resume selling its H20 AI chips to customers in China after being blocked from exporting them to that country earlier this year.

2. Taiwan Semiconductor

As the company that fabricates the advanced chips designed by Nvidia (as well as an array of other chip companies), Taiwan Semiconductor benefits from many of the same tailwinds as the GPU leader. But there are some differences between their businesses that make TSMC stock even more appealing.

As the world’s leading third-party chip foundry, Taiwan Semi manufactured nearly 12,000 products for 522 customers in 2024, employing 288 separate process technologies. It’s involved in about 85% of all semiconductor start-up product prototypes. In short, this is an ideal stock to own if you believe that the semiconductor business broadly will continue to grow, but you want to hedge some of your exposure away from Nvidia.

Taiwan Semi is also moving to limit its exposure to the trade war between Washington and Beijing, and to expand its manufacturing footprint further beyond the island of Taiwan, which China has designs on. The company is in the midst of spending $165 billion to expand its new manufacturing and R&D facility in Arizona and bring some of its most advanced fabrication processes to the U.S.

3. Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms, which operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, is the unquestioned king of the social media companies. On average, 3.48 billion people use its platforms every day — and that number is increasing. Its daily active user count was up by 6% in June from a year earlier.

The company leverages that massive audience — and the mountain of information it collects about them — into an impressive revenue stream. Ad impressions were up 11% in the second quarter from the previous year. Overall, Meta reported $47.5 billion in revenue in the second quarter, up 22% year over year.

Meta’s own artificial intelligence platform, Meta AI, has been driving a lot of its recent success. Meta AI’s chatbot can generate content, answer questions, and create images. The company also provides AI-powered tools to advertisers to help them reach the customers they want, making their ads on its social media platforms more effective.

Tech stocks to buy and hold

Companies in the tech sector must constantly innovate in their efforts to stay relevant, and their stocks can sometimes be volatile. But Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor, and Meta Platforms aren’t merely chasing trends — they’re shaping them. I expect that these companies will remain at the forefront of their industries as we move into the second half of the decade, and I view them as good bets to continue outperforming the market. That’s why I like them for any buy-and-hold portfolio.