“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
— 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 twenty year holding period for an investor who was considering Sherwin-Williams Co (NYSE: SHW) back in 2005, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 12/19/2005 |
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| End date: | 12/17/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $14.60 | ||||
| End price/share: | $327.95 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 684.93 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 892.77 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $25.21 | ||||
| Total return: | 2,827.85% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 18.39% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $293,023.87 | ||||
As we can see, the twenty year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 18.39%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $293,023.87 today (as of 12/17/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 2,827.85% (something to think about: how might SHW shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Sherwin-Williams Co paid investors a total of $25.21/share in dividends over the 20 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 3.16/share, we calculate that SHW has a current yield of approximately 0.96%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 3.16 against the original $14.60/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.58%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it’s doing.” — Peter Lynch
