To turn a small sum into $1 million, growth is the most important metric to consider. Companies that can sustain a high rate of revenue growth over many years, ideally decades, are well on their way to rewarding shareholders with huge returns.

How you get to $1 million depends a lot on how much you have to invest. If you're managing a large portfolio and can invest $50,000 in a single stock, you would need to earn about 16% compound annual returns to grow it to $1 million in, say, 20 years.

However, it would take a 26% annualized return to turn $10,000 into $1 million over 20 years, which is more difficult to achieve but can be done if you invest in the right stocks. Over a long period of time, stocks more or less follow the growth of the underlying company. Therefore, if you have a small sum of money, you want to hone your search to companies that are growing their annual revenues over 20% per year.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com