“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
— 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 Incyte Corporation (NASD: INCY) back in 2004. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:
| Start date: | 08/02/2004 |
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| End date: | 07/30/2024 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $6.04 | ||||
| End price/share: | $67.79 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 1,655.63 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 1,655.63 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 1,022.35% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 12.85% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $112,284.28 | ||||
As shown above, the two-decade investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 12.85%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $112,284.28 today (as of 07/30/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 1,022.35% (something to think about: how might INCY shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“I think you have to learn that there’s a company behind every stock, and that there’s only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.” — Peter Lynch
