“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 2020, investors considering an investment into shares of Royal Caribbean Group (NYSE: RCL) 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: | 10/19/2020 |
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| End date: | 10/16/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $59.71 | ||||
| End price/share: | $298.51 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 167.48 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 169.85 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $3.45 | ||||
| Total return: | 407.01% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 38.41% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $50,706.52 | ||||
The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 38.41%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $50,706.52 today (as of 10/16/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 407.01% (something to think about: how might RCL shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Royal Caribbean Group paid investors a total of $3.45/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/share, we calculate that RCL has a current yield of approximately 1.34%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 4 against the original $59.71/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 2.24%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.” — Robert Allen
