Photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org

“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five 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 five year holding period for an investor who was considering Apollo Global Management Inc (new (NYSE: APO) back in 2021, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.

Start date: 02/22/2021
$10,000

02/22/2021
  $25,814

02/19/2026
End date: 02/19/2026
Start price/share: $51.00
End price/share: $118.34
Starting shares: 196.08
Ending shares: 218.13
Dividends reinvested/share: $9.11
Total return: 158.14%
Average annual return: 20.91%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $25,814.23

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 20.91%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $25,814.23 today (as of 02/19/2026). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 158.14% (something to think about: how might APO shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Apollo Global Management Inc (new paid investors a total of $9.11/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 2.04/share, we calculate that APO has a current yield of approximately 1.72%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.04 against the original $51.00/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 3.37%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“You make most of your money in a bear market, you just don’t realize it at the time.” — Shelby Davis