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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 Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (NYSE: HIG)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2015.

Start date: 11/30/2015
$10,000

11/30/2015
$11,143

11/27/2020
End date: 11/27/2020
Start price/share: $45.64
End price/share: $45.83
Starting shares: 219.11
Ending shares: 243.20
Dividends reinvested/share: $5.07
Total return: 11.46%
Average annual return: 2.19%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $11,143.36

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 2.19%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $11,143.36 today (as of 11/27/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 11.46% (something to think about: how might HIG shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. paid investors a total of $5.07/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 1.3/share, we calculate that HIG has a current yield of approximately 2.84%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.3 against the original $45.64/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.22%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Everyone has the brainpower to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach. If you are susceptible to selling everything in a panic, you ought to avoid stocks and mutual funds altogether.” — Peter Lynch