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“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”

— Warren Buffett

The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a five year holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Archer Daniels Midland Co. (NYSE: ADM)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2014.

Start date: 07/11/2014
$10,000

07/11/2014
$10,065

07/10/2019
End date: 07/10/2019
Start price/share: $47.85
End price/share: $41.80
Starting shares: 208.99
Ending shares: 240.80
Dividends reinvested/share: $6.12
Total return: 0.66%
Average annual return: 0.13%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $10,065.17

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 0.13%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $10,065.17 today (as of 07/10/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 0.66% (something to think about: how might ADM shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Archer Daniels Midland Co. paid investors a total of $6.12/share in dividends over the 5 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 1.4/share, we calculate that ADM has a current yield of approximately 3.35%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.4 against the original $47.85/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 7.00%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart.” — Charlie Munger