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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

One of the most important things investors can learn from Warren Buffett, is about how they approach their time horizon for an investment into a stock under consideration. Because immediately after buying shares of a given stock, investors will then be able to check on the day-to-day (and even minute-by-minute) market value. Some days the stock market will be up, other days down. These daily fluctuations can often distract from the long-term view. Today, we look at the result of a ten year holding period for an investor who was considering Amphenol Corp. (NYSE: APH) back in 2011, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.

Start date: 10/19/2011
$10,000

10/19/2011
$80,780

10/18/2021
End date: 10/18/2021
Start price/share: $10.48
End price/share: $77.48
Starting shares: 954.20
Ending shares: 1,042.86
Dividends reinvested/share: $3.27
Total return: 708.01%
Average annual return: 23.22%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $80,780.94

The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 23.22%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $80,780.94 today (as of 10/18/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 708.01% (something to think about: how might APH shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Amphenol Corp. paid investors a total of $3.27/share in dividends over the 10 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 .58/share, we calculate that APH has a current yield of approximately 0.75%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .58 against the original $10.48/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 7.16%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.” — Benjamin Graham