“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
— Warren Buffett
A critical pearl of wisdom from Warren Buffett teaches us that with any potential stock investment we may make, as soon as our buy order is filled we will have a choice: to remain a co-owner of that company for the long haul, or to react to the inevitable short-term ups and downs that the stock market is famous for (sometimes sharp ups and downs).
The reality of this choice forces us to challenge our confidence in any given company we might invest into, and keep our eyes on the long-term time horizon. The market may go up and down the interim, but over a decade-long holding period, will the investment succeed?
Back in 2009, investors may have been asking themselves that very question about Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC). Let’s examine what would have happened over a decade-long holding period, had you invested in NSC shares back in 2009 and held on.
| Start date: | 03/20/2009 |
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| End date: | 03/19/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $30.46 | ||||
| End price/share: | $178.78 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 328.30 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 423.36 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $21.93 | ||||
| Total return: | 656.88% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 22.43% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $75,704.08 | ||||
The above analysis shows the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 22.43%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $75,704.08 today (as of 03/19/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 656.88% (something to think about: how might NSC shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Norfolk Southern Corp. paid investors a total of $21.93/share in dividends over the 10 holding period, marking a second component of the total return beyond share price change alone. Much like watering a tree, reinvesting dividends can help an investment to grow over time — for the above calculations we assume dividend reinvestment (and for this exercise the closing price on ex-date is used for the reinvestment of a given dividend).
Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 3.44/share, we calculate that NSC has a current yield of approximately 1.92%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 3.44 against the original $30.46/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.30%.
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“In the long run, we are all dead.” — John Maynard Keynes
