If You Bought Amazon.com In 2018, Here’s The Investment Outcome

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— 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 2018, investors considering an investment into shares of Amazon.com Inc (NASD: AMZN) 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.

AMZN 5-Year Return Details
Start date:	12/11/2018	$10,000 12/11/2018   $17,944 12/08/2023
End date:	12/08/2023
Start price/share:	$82.16
End price/share:	$147.42
Starting shares:	121.71
Ending shares:	121.71
Dividends reinvested/share:	$0.00
Total return:	79.43%
Average annual return:	12.42%
Starting investment:	$10,000.00
Ending investment:	$17,944.83

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 12.42%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $17,944.83 today (as of 12/08/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 79.43% (something to think about: how might AMZN shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

One more piece of investment wisdom to leave you with:
“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