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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 wisdom of Warren Buffett reflects a value-based philosophy about investing that says investors are buying shares in a business, and encourages strategic thinking about investment time horizon. Before placing a buy order for a stock, a great question we can ask is whether we would still be comfortable making the investment if we couldn’t sell it for many years?

A “buy-and-hold” approach may call for a time horizon that spans a long period of time — maybe even lasting for a decade-long holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of Meta Platforms Inc (NASD: META) back in 2013. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:

Start date: 01/23/2013
$10,000

01/23/2013
  $45,211

01/20/2023
End date: 01/20/2023
Start price/share: $30.82
End price/share: $139.37
Starting shares: 324.46
Ending shares: 324.46
Dividends reinvested/share: $0.00
Total return: 352.21%
Average annual return: 16.29%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $45,211.00

As we can see, the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 16.29%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $45,211.00 today (as of 01/20/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 352.21% (something to think about: how might META shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“You can’t restate a dividend.” — Malon Wilkus