That hasn't always been true. Over long periods, stocks have returned an average of 10% a year. And that was enough to get investors where they wanted to go. But recently, the market hasn't been anywhere near that friendly. Over the 10 years that ended Dec. 22, 2008, the broad-based Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) showed an average annual loss of 0.93%. Yep, buy-and-hold index investors finished the period poorer than they started, even with dividends included.

My system for beating the market indexes won't produce instant wealth. And it won't protect you from losses during every market downturn. But it is a system that has worked for my online portfolio since May 1997. As of Dec. 22, the online portfolio had beaten the total return for the S&P 500 by 184 percentage points over the past 10 years.

My strategy is simple: Put more money into the hottest trends in the global economy as they're getting hot. Sell those trends when they get too hot. And put very little money into the trends that are cold or getting colder. In my book, I give you my take on the 10 trends that will, I believe, drive the global economy over the next five to 10 years -- or longer. And I explain how you can follow those trends in the headlines that fill the daily newspapers and Internet sites.

I've picked 50 stocks that you can use to invest in those trends. You shouldn't own all of these all the time. But by rotating in and out of these stocks and the trends they encapsulate, you can profit from what's heating up and avoid big losses from what's cooling down. You can get my most recent take on which trends to overweight and which to underweight by reading my most recent column on the timeliness of these trends. I last updated my take on these trends on March 17, 2009.

I've selected these stocks for the long term. But company fortunes change. In the coming years, some of the stocks on this list will become less central to my 10 trends. Some may even go out of business. And newcomers that hadn't even appeared on the horizon when I first compiled this list will become must-own stocks if you want to profit from these trends.

On this page, I'll track the performance of every stock in The Jubak Picks' 50 Best from this portfolio's first day -- Dec. 30, 2008 -- to the present. I'll also track the performance of the stocks on this list as a whole and compare that to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite ($COMPX) indexes.

But remember, your performance should be better than any of these totals because you aren't going to buy and hold this entire list. If you're a more aggressive investor or one with a shorter time horizon, you should have a look at my Jubak's Picks 12-month portfolio.

Editor's note: Jim Jubak is an employee of Microsoft and owns stock in the company. He also may at any time own shares in a number of companies included in the following list.