“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— 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 two-decade holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of Charles River Laboratories International Inc. (NYSE: CRL) back in 2003. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:
| Start date: | 10/06/2003 |
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| End date: | 10/03/2023 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $31.25 | ||||
| End price/share: | $191.68 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 320.00 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 320.00 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 513.38% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 9.49% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $61,334.51 | ||||
As shown above, the two-decade investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 9.49%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $61,334.51 today (as of 10/03/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 513.38% (something to think about: how might CRL shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“While it might seem that anyone can be a value investor, the essential characteristics of this type of investor-patience, discipline, and risk aversion-may well be genetically determined.” — Seth Klarman
