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“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”

— 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 2019, investors considering an investment into shares of Newmont Corp (NYSE: NEM) 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.

Start date: 10/08/2019
$10,000

10/08/2019
  $15,905

10/07/2024
End date: 10/07/2024
Start price/share: $38.92
End price/share: $52.98
Starting shares: 256.94
Ending shares: 300.17
Dividends reinvested/share: $7.93
Total return: 59.03%
Average annual return: 9.72%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $15,905.21

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 9.72%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $15,905.21 today (as of 10/07/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 59.03% (something to think about: how might NEM shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Newmont Corp paid investors a total of $7.93/share in dividends over the 5 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 1/share, we calculate that NEM has a current yield of approximately 1.89%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1 against the original $38.92/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 4.86%.

One more investment quote to leave you with:
“If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.” — Warren Buffett