“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”
— Warren Buffett
The wisdom of Warren Buffett reflects a value-based philosophy about investing that says investors are buying shares in a business, and encourages strategic thinking about investment time horizon. Before placing a buy order for a stock, a great question we can ask is whether we would still be comfortable making the investment if we couldn’t sell it for many years?
A “buy-and-hold” approach may call for a time horizon that spans a long period of time — maybe even lasting for a five year holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of Intuitive Surgical Inc (NASD: ISRG) back in 2014. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:
| Start date: | 06/16/2014 |
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| End date: | 06/13/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $136.61 | ||||
| End price/share: | $505.60 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 73.20 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 73.20 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 270.10% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 29.95% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $37,004.79 | ||||
As shown above, the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 29.95%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $37,004.79 today (as of 06/13/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 270.10% (something to think about: how might ISRG shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” — Charlie Munger
