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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 United Parcel Service Inc (NYSE: UPS) back in 2013, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.

Start date: 02/19/2013
$10,000

02/19/2013
  $29,628

02/15/2023
End date: 02/15/2023
Start price/share: $84.76
End price/share: $186.84
Starting shares: 117.98
Ending shares: 158.58
Dividends reinvested/share: $36.20
Total return: 196.29%
Average annual return: 11.48%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $29,628.59

The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 11.48%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $29,628.59 today (as of 02/15/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 196.29% (something to think about: how might UPS shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that United Parcel Service Inc paid investors a total of $36.20/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 6.48/share, we calculate that UPS has a current yield of approximately 3.47%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 6.48 against the original $84.76/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 4.09%.

One more investment quote to leave you with:
“Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket… it’s part-ownership of a business.” — Peter Lynch