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“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”

— Warren Buffett

The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a decade-long holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Amazon.com Inc (NASD: AMZN)? Today, we examine the outcome of a decade-long investment into the stock back in 2009.

Start date: 11/09/2009
$10,000

11/09/2009
$141,181

11/07/2019
End date: 11/07/2019
Start price/share: $126.67
End price/share: $1,788.20
Starting shares: 78.95
Ending shares: 78.95
Dividends reinvested/share: $0.00
Total return: 1,311.70%
Average annual return: 30.31%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $141,181.39

As shown above, the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 30.31%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $141,181.39 today (as of 11/07/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 1,311.70% (something to think about: how might AMZN shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

One more piece of investment wisdom to leave you with:
“If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.” — John Bogle