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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

The investment philosophy practiced by Warren Buffett calls for investors to take a long-term horizon when making an investment, such as a ten year holding period (or even longer), and reconsider making the investment in the first place if unable to envision holding the stock for at least five years. Today, we look at how such a long-term strategy would have done for investors in United Airlines Holdings Inc (NASD: UAL) back in 2012, holding through to today.

Start date: 08/06/2012
$10,000

08/06/2012
  $20,899

08/04/2022
End date: 08/04/2022
Start price/share: $18.48
End price/share: $38.63
Starting shares: 541.13
Ending shares: 541.13
Dividends reinvested/share: $0.00
Total return: 109.04%
Average annual return: 7.65%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $20,899.71

As shown above, the ten year investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 7.65%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $20,899.71 today (as of 08/04/2022). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 109.04% (something to think about: how might UAL shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

More investment wisdom to ponder:
“In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.” — Benjamin Graham