Investing in the stock market is a great way to generate wealth, as long as you allow for the time needed to make it happen. Taking a long-term approach maximizes potential returns as even the best businesses can take years (even decades) to fully flourish. 

The two largest companies in the world right now -- Apple and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) -- currently offer their investors a combined $5 trillion in value, but these two companies founded in the mid-1970s took over 40 years to reach this point.

Looking to the future, where might the next generation of market leaders come from? The technology on many investors' minds right now is artificial intelligence (AI), and there's reason to believe it will create trillions of dollars in value once this developing technology reaches maturity. Some analyst estimates suggest AI will add $200 trillion to global economic output by 2030, which implies it will triple the world's current gross domestic product (GDP). That's a giant pie for AI-related companies to share.

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Source Fool.com