“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”
— Warren Buffett
One of the most important things investors can learn from Warren Buffett, is about how they approach their time horizon for an investment into a stock under consideration. Because immediately after buying shares of a given stock, investors will then be able to check on the day-to-day (and even minute-by-minute) market value. Some days the stock market will be up, other days down. These daily fluctuations can often distract from the long-term view. Today, we look at the result of a five year holding period for an investor who was considering Tractor Supply Co. (NASD: TSCO) back in 2019, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 12/18/2019 |
|
|||
| End date: | 12/17/2024 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $93.11 | ||||
| End price/share: | $275.21 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 107.40 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 116.00 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $15.78 | ||||
| Total return: | 219.23% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 26.11% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $31,917.12 | ||||
As we can see, the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 26.11%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $31,917.12 today (as of 12/17/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 219.23% (something to think about: how might TSCO shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Tractor Supply Co. paid investors a total of $15.78/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 4.4/share, we calculate that TSCO has a current yield of approximately 1.60%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 4.4 against the original $93.11/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 1.72%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“In the long run, we are all dead.” — John Maynard Keynes
