“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
— Warren Buffett
The above quote from Warren Buffett is timeless, and brings into focus the choice about time horizon that any investor should think about before buying a stock they are considering. Behind every stock is an actual business; what will that business look like over a decade-long period?
Today, let’s look backwards in time to 2015, and take a look at what happened to investors who asked that very question about Adobe Inc (NASD: ADBE), by taking a look at the investment outcome over a decade-long holding period.
| Start date: | 04/14/2015 |
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| End date: | 04/11/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $75.95 | ||||
| End price/share: | $352.47 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 131.67 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 131.67 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 364.08% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 16.59% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $46,410.16 | ||||
As shown above, the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 16.59%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $46,410.16 today (as of 04/11/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 364.08% (something to think about: how might ADBE shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“We ignore outlooks and forecasts… we’re lousy at it and we admit it … everyone else is lousy too, but most people won’t admit it.” — Martin Whitman
