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“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

— 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 twenty year holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASD: ALXN) back in 2000. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:

Start date: 03/17/2000
$10,000

03/17/2000
$34,925

03/16/2020
End date: 03/16/2020
Start price/share: $21.63
End price/share: $75.56
Starting shares: 462.32
Ending shares: 462.32
Dividends reinvested/share: $0.00
Total return: 249.33%
Average annual return: 6.45%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $34,925.00

As shown above, the twenty year investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 6.45%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $34,925.00 today (as of 03/16/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 249.33% (something to think about: how might ALXN shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

More investment wisdom to ponder:
“The idea that a bell rings to signal when to get into or out of the stock market is simply not credible. After nearly fifty years in this business, I don’t know anybody who has done it successfully and consistently.” — Jack Bogle