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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 decade-long holding period for an investor who was considering Masco Corp. (NYSE: MAS) back in 2012, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.

Start date: 03/22/2012
$10,000

03/22/2012
$53,256

03/21/2022
End date: 03/21/2022
Start price/share: $12.07
End price/share: $55.88
Starting shares: 828.50
Ending shares: 952.67
Dividends reinvested/share: $4.48
Total return: 432.35%
Average annual return: 18.20%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $53,256.63

The above analysis shows the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 18.20%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $53,256.63 today (as of 03/21/2022). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 432.35% (something to think about: how might MAS shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Masco Corp. paid investors a total of $4.48/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 1.12/share, we calculate that MAS has a current yield of approximately 2.00%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.12 against the original $12.07/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 16.57%.

More investment wisdom to ponder:
“The person who starts simply with the idea of getting rich won’t succeed; you must have a larger ambition.” — John Rockefeller