“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 two-decade holding period for an investor who was considering Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) back in 2006, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 03/03/2006 |
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| End date: | 03/02/2026 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $56.97 | ||||
| End price/share: | $189.60 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 175.53 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 379.30 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $86.02 | ||||
| Total return: | 619.15% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 10.36% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $71,895.71 | ||||
The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 10.36%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $71,895.71 today (as of 03/02/2026). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 619.15% (something to think about: how might CVX shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Chevron Corporation paid investors a total of $86.02/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 7.12/share, we calculate that CVX has a current yield of approximately 3.76%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 7.12 against the original $56.97/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.60%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.” — Benjamin Graham
