“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
— Warren Buffett
Investors can learn a lot from Warren Buffett, whose above quote teaches the importance of thinking about investment time horizon, and asking ourselves before buying any given stock: can we envision holding onto it for years — even a ten year holding period possibly?
Suppose a “buy-and-hold” investor was considering an investment into Blackstone Inc (NYSE: BX) back in 2013: back then, such an investor may have been pondering this very same question. Had they answered “yes” to a full ten year investment time horizon and then actually held for these past 10 years, here’s how that investment would have turned out.
| Start date: | 12/20/2013 |
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| End date: | 12/19/2023 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $30.24 | ||||
| End price/share: | $128.29 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 330.69 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 567.15 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $26.88 | ||||
| Total return: | 627.59% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 21.95% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $72,787.06 | ||||
The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 21.95%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $72,787.06 today (as of 12/19/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 627.59% (something to think about: how might BX shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Blackstone Inc paid investors a total of $26.88/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 3.2/share, we calculate that BX has a current yield of approximately 2.49%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 3.2 against the original $30.24/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 8.23%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.” — George Soros
