The 10 best stock market investments ever.

It’s the stuff of every investor’s dream – a share that you buy for next to nothing and which then soars in price, making you a millionaire in the process.

For a tiny handful of investors who bought and sold the right share at the right time that dream became a reality.

Let’s takes a look at Times version Top ten of the shares that made millionaires of some investors for a comparatively modest stake.

1. Poseidon

This Australian mining share created a worldwide sensation in the late 1960s. In September 1969 Poseidon, a small nickel mining company made a large find at Windarra, in Western Australia. Within a month the company’s share price had rocketed from 0.8 Australian dollars to 12.3 Australian dollars. By February 1970 Poseidon shares had reached 280 Australian dollars on the back of a massive speculative boom, but then fell away sharply because the bubble was unsustainable and the nickel price fell. Someone buying just 3,571 shares costing 2,856 Australian dollars at the 0.80 dollar price back in early September 1969 would have been an Australian dollar millionaire at the 280 dollar price in February 1970.

2. Berkshire Hathaway

The investment vehicle of Warren Buffet, the celebrated US investor, may not have enjoyed the meteoric rise in share price of Poseidon but it has been an outstanding moneyspinner for those who have signed up for the long-term ride.
In 1962, just three years before Buffet took it over,  Berkshire Hathaway’s share price stood at 7.56 US dollars. It now stands at about 112,000 US dollars. This means that someone who had bought just nine shares costing a total of 68 dollars back in 1962 would now be a US dollar millionaire.

3. Microsoft

If Warren Buffet is the most celebrated investor in the US Bill Gates must be its most celebrated businessman. Anyone who bought into his Microsoft company back in 1987 has been handsomely rewarded since. After adjusting for stock splits, the price of Microsoft shares in 1987 was, at one point, the equivalent of about 0.08 US dollars per share, compared to their present price of 25.4 dollars. So anyone holding the equivalent of 3,149 dollars’ worth of Microsoft shares in 1987 would now be a US dollar millionaire.

4. Cisco Systems

Like Microsoft this California-based information networking company rode the IT boom of the 1990s. In March 1990 its share price was the equivalent of 0.08 US dollars. Ten years later, in March 2000, at the height of the tech bubble, it was 77.3 dollars. So someone who held the equivalent of just over 1,000 dollars’ worth of Cisco stock in March 1990 would have turned that into a million dollars in a decade.

5. Sage Group

Not all the IT action was on the other side of the Atlantic. Sage Group, the UK accounting software specialist, has produced a return, including dividends, of 6,000 per cent for investors over the past 18 years. Someone with £17,000 invested in Sage Group back in 1990 and who had reinvested all dividends would now be sitting on a nest-egg of more than £1 million.

6. Next

Although this UK clothing retailer has suffered a sharp fall in the past year, those who got on board the shares in the depths of the previous recession, in December 1990, have reaped a rich reward. Ben Yearsley, of Hargreaves Lansdown, the independent financial adviser, says the shares hit £24 in the first half of 2007 – a 17,600 per cent rise on their December 1990 price of 13.5p. Someone who held £5,624 worth of Next shares in December 1990 would, in early 2007, have had a holding worth more than £1 million, though the recent market slide would have more than halved that figure.

7. Nokia

The Finnish mobile phone manufacturer was a little known company back in 1992, when its share price stood, at one point, at just a tenth  of a euro. In contrast, says Mr Yearsley, the current share price is about 17.8 euros – an increase of 17,700 per cent. Someone who bought or held just over 5,600 euros worth of Nokia shares in October 1992 would now be a millionaire.

8. Gresham House investment trust

This private equity investment trust enjoyed a spectacular run in the nine years from August 1998 to August 2007, producing a total return for investors of 3,800 per cent. Anyone who held £25,600 worth of Gresham House shares in August 1998, and reinvested all dividends, would now be sitting on a million pound nest-egg.

9. BlackRock World Mining Trust

This investment trust has ridden the boom in metals and minerals with great effect. Between September 1998 and May this year, the investment trust produced a return of 1,897 per cent. This means that someone who invested just over £50,000 back in September 1998 and reinvested the dividends would now have joined the millionaire’s club.

10. Google

Launched just four years ago this classic internet play has already made millionaires out of a lot of Google staff and, judging by its stellar performance so far, it will, in due course, do the same thing for many private investors. Since its flotation at 85 US dollars in August 2004 the share price has already risen almost sixfold to 485 dollars and at its peak had gone up more than eightfold to more than 700 dollars.