“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
— 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 decade-long holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of First Solar Inc (NASD: FSLR) back in 2015. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:
| Start date: | 08/27/2015 |
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| End date: | 08/26/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $47.84 | ||||
| End price/share: | $196.72 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 209.03 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 209.03 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 311.20% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 15.18% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $41,125.11 | ||||
As we can see, 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 08/26/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 311.20% (something to think about: how might FSLR shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.” — Benjamin Graham
