“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 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 decade-long holding period for an investor who was considering Paychex Inc (NASD: PAYX) back in 2015, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 07/22/2015 |
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| End date: | 07/21/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $47.27 | ||||
| End price/share: | $142.66 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 211.55 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 288.19 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $27.66 | ||||
| Total return: | 311.13% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 15.18% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $41,125.11 | ||||
The above analysis shows the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 15.18%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $41,125.11 today (as of 07/21/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 311.13% (something to think about: how might PAYX shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Paychex Inc paid investors a total of $27.66/share in dividends over the 10 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 4.32/share, we calculate that PAYX has a current yield of approximately 3.03%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 4.32 against the original $47.27/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.41%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“Value investing means really asking what are the best values, and not assuming that because something looks expensive that it is, or assuming that because a stock is down in price and trades at low multiples that it is a bargain.” — Bill Miller
