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A new decade is right around the corner, and if you’re wondering how you should invest for the next 10 years, history paints a damning portrait of what not to do.

Investors might think it’s best to invest in the market-leading tech stocks like Facebook (ticker: FB), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), but research from Gavekal’s Louis-Vincent Gave suggests otherwise.

Gave looked at the top-10 stocks at the beginning of each decade since 1980. His findings demonstrated that the top-10 stocks by market cap rarely stay there during the following 10 years. Instead, prevalent investing patterns changed drastically, as the old winners were replaced with the new.

From the rise of oil in 1980 and 2010, to fears of Japanese dominance at the beginning of the 1990s, the investing trends at the start of the decade have never lasted, he noted. In fact, if you avoided the prevailing trend every 10 years, you would have been out on top every decade since 1980, Gave writes. Now it could be tech’s turn, whether because of government regulations and a shift away from globalization, or some other factor.

Gave noted that one of the key reasons for high turnover is that size and growth “are hard to reconcile.” Exxon Mobil is the only company to consistently stay on the list, with Microsoft an honorable mention for starting three decades in the top 10.

“The bigger the organization, the more bureaucratic it will tend to become, the more entrenched in its ways, and the less likely to take risks and so deliver the outsized growth investors anticipate,” he wrote. “Elephants and hippos are very resilient, but they are neither as fast, nor as agile, as cheetahs or leopards.”

Gave closed by discussing the three kinds of bubbles—those driven by fear, greed from new technologies, and greed from the expansion of capitalism. And he leaves no doubt that he considers tech a bubble.

“The consensus is that we will genuinely move into a brave new world of ever-better modern conveniences,” he wrote. “But while this sounds attractive and exciting, we should remember that multi-year investment trends are like very big dogs: they seldom live past their first decade.”

Instead, he notes, the next top 10 stocks by 2030 would likely reflect the growth of capitalism into new territories, or a fear about resources that would benefit commodities investors.

“The Mayans used to believe that history was made up of recurring cycles of 52 years; a notion which fits nicely with the popular belief that people avoid making their parents’ mistakes, only to repeat their grandparents’ errors,” he wrote. “So perhaps in 2030 the market will be primed for a return of the belief that democracy can only lead to inflation, as politicians chase votes with barely-dry cash?”

Write to Connor Smith at connor.smith@barrons.com