Prediction: 3 Stocks That Could Be Worth More Than Microsoft by 2040

The stock market offers few certainties, with one exception: Change.

Over time, innovation, competitive advantages, acquisitions, legal judgments, and a host of other factors, are responsible for reshuffling Wall Street's leaderboard. In other words, today's largest companies should look vastly different come 10 or 20 years from now.

For example, General Electric, Cisco Systems, Lucent Technologies, and Nokia, the latter of which would go on to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in 2015, were all among the 10 most-valuable publicly traded companies in 1999. Some 23 years later, GE has dropped to No. 127, Cisco has fallen to No. 44, Lucent isn't even a publicly traded company anymore, and Nokia has plunged all the way to No. 391.

Source Fool.com