“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”
— 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 five 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 5 years to 2017, investors considering an investment into shares of Adobe Inc (NASD: ADBE) may have been pondering this very question and thinking about their potential investment result over a full five year time horizon. Here’s how that would have worked out.
| Start date: | 11/16/2017 |
|
|||
| End date: | 11/15/2022 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $182.30 | ||||
| End price/share: | $345.96 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 54.85 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 54.85 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 89.78% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 13.67% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $18,977.08 | ||||
As shown above, the five year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 13.67%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $18,977.08 today (as of 11/15/2022). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 89.78% (something to think about: how might ADBE shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“Thousands of experts study overbought indicators, head-and-shoulder patterns, put-call ratios, the Fed’s policy on money supply…and they can’t predict markets with any useful consistency, any more than the gizzard squeezers could tell the Roman emperors when the Huns would attack.” — Peter Lynch
