Best Quality Stocks — May 2026
MoatMap's Quality factor scores the moat strength of every stock in the universe — not by qualitative narrative, but by the three financial signatures that almost always show up when a moat is real: high return on invested capital, a clean Piotroski F-Score, and conservative leverage. The 25 stocks below are the highest-Quality names in the global universe right now.
Updated ·How we score stocks·See all four pillars
Top 25 Quality Stocks Right Now
| # | Ticker | Company | Score | Q | V | M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3529.TWO | eMemory Technology Inc. | 77 | 94 | 13 | 51 |
| 2 | THX.L | Thor Explorations Ltd. | 100 | 94 | 78 | 40 |
| 3 | WDO.TO | Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. | 100 | 94 | 55 | 62 |
| 4 | 603444.SS | G-bits Network Technology (Xiamen) Co., Ltd. | 94 | 93 | 59 | 30 |
| 5 | GAW.L | Games Workshop Group PLC | 93 | 93 | 19 | 68 |
| 6 | RAA.DE | RATIONAL Aktiengesellschaft | 83 | 93 | 31 | 42 |
| 7 | 688578.SS | Shanghai Allist Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. | 92 | 93 | 39 | 46 |
| 8 | DMLP | Dorchester Minerals, L.P. | 97 | 93 | 45 | 52 |
| 9 | 0276.KL | Autocount Dotcom Berhad | 95 | 93 | 72 | 20 |
| 10 | 8017.HK | TradeGo FinTech Limited | 94 | 93 | 62 | 28 |
| 11 | YB | Yuanbao Inc. | 97 | 93 | 82 | 17 |
| 12 | 6532.T | Baycurrent, Inc. | 64 | 92 | 37 | 18 |
| 13 | PHIL.MI | Philogen S.p.A. | 100 | 92 | 70 | 51 |
| 14 | 5TP.SI | CNMC Goldmine Holdings Limited | 97 | 92 | 56 | 43 |
| 15 | HACK.ST | Hacksaw AB | 91 | 92 | 27 | 58 |
| 16 | GQG.AX | GQG Partners Inc. | 90 | 92 | 56 | 27 |
| 17 | THX.V | Thor Explorations Ltd. | 100 | 92 | 75 | 40 |
| 18 | CMOCTEZ.MX | Corporación Moctezuma, S.A.B. de C.V. | 99 | 91 | 65 | 46 |
| 19 | 2718.TWO | Allmind Holdings Corporation | 100 | 91 | 85 | 33 |
| 20 | NVD.DE | NVIDIA Corporation | 81 | 91 | 21 | 51 |
| 21 | DECK | Deckers Outdoor Corporation | 97 | 91 | 42 | 58 |
| 22 | 7822.TW | V5 TECHNOLOGIES CO LTD | 84 | 91 | 24 | 52 |
| 23 | 2400.HK | XD Inc. | 71 | 91 | 31 | 32 |
| 24 | FAST | Fastenal Company | 83 | 91 | 23 | 51 |
| 25 | VOT.WA | Votum S.A. | 100 | 91 | 88 | 46 |
Why Quality Is the Factor Buffett Cares About
Buffett's framing — castles surrounded by moats — sounds qualitative, but the financial fingerprint of a moat is concrete and measurable. Companies with structural advantages earn returns on capital well above their cost of capital, and they keep doing it for years. Companies without moats see those returns competed away. Quality, as a factor, isolates that signature: ROIC, balance-sheet strength, and accounting cleanliness, percentile-ranked across the global universe.
Why this matters in 2026: the gap between the best and worst businesses has widened, not narrowed. Software, network-effect platforms, regulated franchises, and asset-light brands all earn returns far above their cost of capital. Capital-intensive commodity producers, undifferentiated retailers, and businesses dependent on a single product cycle don't. Quality — measured systematically — surfaces the first group while flagging the second.
Quality is also the factor that compounds best over long holding periods. Value works in mean-reversion regimes; Momentum works in trending regimes; Quality works because excellent businesses keep getting more excellent. A high-Quality screen at any single point in time tends to surface companies that will still be high-Quality 3-5 years later — which is when the compounding actually pays.
Caveat: Quality alone is not a complete strategy. The market is generally aware of which businesses are excellent, and prices them accordingly. A high-Quality stock at 35x earnings can still produce mediocre returns if growth disappoints. Pair Quality screening with Value (cross-check the Value column on the table below) to find the rare combination that drives outsized long-term returns.
Related reading: What Is an Economic Moat? 5 Types With Real Examples →
Frequently Asked Questions
- What are the best Quality stocks to buy in 2026?
- MoatMap's top 25 Quality stocks are listed in the table above, ranked by the Quality factor score (ROIC, Piotroski F-Score, leverage). The list refreshes daily as new fundamental data is processed. Cross-check the Value and Momentum scores for each name before treating it as a buy — a high-Quality stock at a stretched valuation can still underperform.
- What does MoatMap's Quality score measure?
- Quality is a percentile-ranked composite of three sub-factors. ROIC (return on invested capital) measures how productively a business deploys its capital. Piotroski F-Score is a 9-point accounting-quality screen that flags improving fundamentals. Leverage measures balance-sheet strength via debt/equity and interest coverage. A Quality score above 80 typically indicates a company with the financial fingerprint of a wide moat.
- Are high-Quality stocks the same as wide-moat stocks?
- Closely related but not identical. A wide moat is a qualitative judgment about why competitors can't catch up (network effects, switching costs, brand power, cost advantages, intangible assets). A high Quality score is the quantitative shadow that moat casts on the financial statements. Most genuinely wide-moat companies score 80+ on Quality. The exceptions are usually capital-intensive moats (utilities, certain pharma) where ROIC reads lower because of large invested capital.
- What's a good ROIC for a Quality stock?
- ROIC above 15% sustained for 5+ years is the threshold most factor researchers use. Above 20% is exceptional. Below 8% (the rough cost-of-capital baseline) is a red flag — it means the business is destroying value for shareholders even when it 'earns' on paper. Quality scores compress this into a percentile rank so you can compare across sectors with very different capital structures.
- How is the Piotroski F-Score used?
- Piotroski's F-Score is a 9-point check on whether a company's accounting story is internally consistent and improving year-over-year (positive earnings, positive operating cash flow, growing margins, declining leverage, etc.). High F-Scores correlate with positive future returns even within already-cheap stocks — which is why Quality, when combined with Value, historically beats either factor alone.
- How often does this Quality ranking refresh?
- Daily. Fundamental data and Quality scores are recomputed as new financial statements and price data flow through the MoatMap pipeline. The page itself is cached for 1 hour at the edge — so the ranking on screen is at most a few hours behind the latest scoring run.