We continue to look for ideas from others for investment selections. Fool contributor Brian Stoffel owns shares of Apple, Google, Travelzoo, Coca-Cola, SodaStream, Zipcar, and Netflix. He sets out to recommend the four stocks on which he would base a long term investment portfolio based on stocks he already owns.

His four longterm picks are

• Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) clearly have had a great run recently and Brian believes that while Steve Jobs is no longer with us; his greatness, however, is -- in the form of those products he helped design and new ones which the public does not yet know about
• Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) If Apple is a good example of a company with a bright future, then I think Google is an even better example
• Coke (NYSE: KO) -- a complete contrast from the tech giants which gives great diversification. The Coke brand is just about the most ubiquitous in the world.
• Zipcar (NYSE: ZIP) is the spunky upstart.Zipcar is capitalizing on a shift under way in many urban areas: a second-guessing about the necessity of car ownership. In much the same way the recent financial mess has made us rethink the imperative of home ownership, many Zipsters have decided that the benefits of car ownership no longer outweigh the costs.

All four of these stocks are also current selections of The Motley Fool's Million Dollar Portfolio (MDP) service.

This is certainly an interesting selection and worth measuring against our ETF benchmark of  a balanced portfolio of Dividend producing ETFs to see how the historical returns compare. This provides a stark contrast between the blanket coverage of an ETF portfolio and one who picks a stock based on their belief in the company.

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