“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 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 decade-long holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of Mettler-Toledo International, Inc. (NYSE: MTD) back in 2010. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:
| Start date: | 07/07/2010 |
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| End date: | 07/06/2020 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $113.51 | ||||
| End price/share: | $823.45 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 88.10 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 88.10 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 625.44% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 21.90% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $72,528.44 | ||||
As we can see, the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 21.90%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $72,528.44 today (as of 07/06/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 625.44% (something to think about: how might MTD shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Another great investment quote to think about:
“The most important thing about an investment philosophy is that you have one.” — David Booth
