“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— Warren Buffett
This inspiring quote from Warren Buffett teaches us the importance of considering our investment time horizon when approaching any given investment: Could we envision ourselves holding the stock we are considering for many years? Even a twenty year holding period potentially?
For “buy-and-hold” investors taking a long-term view, what’s important isn’t the short-term stock market fluctuations that will inevitably occur, but what happens over the long haul. Looking back 20 years to 2001, investors considering an investment into shares of Amazon.com Inc (NASD: AMZN) may have been pondering this very question and thinking about their potential investment result over a full twenty year time horizon. Here’s how that would have worked out.
| Start date: | 03/05/2001 |
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| End date: | 03/02/2021 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $12.62 | ||||
| End price/share: | $3,094.53 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 792.08 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 792.08 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 24,411.13% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 31.65% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $2,449,467.21 | ||||
As we can see, the twenty year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 31.65%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $2,449,467.21 today (as of 03/02/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 24,411.13% (something to think about: how might AMZN shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute.” — William Feather
