“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 Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE: WM) back in 1999, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 06/04/1999 |
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| End date: | 06/03/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $55.62 | ||||
| End price/share: | $111.37 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 179.78 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 288.72 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $19.93 | ||||
| Total return: | 221.55% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 6.01% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $32,152.48 | ||||
The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 6.01%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $32,152.48 today (as of 06/03/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 221.55% (something to think about: how might WM shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Waste Management, Inc. paid investors a total of $19.93/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 2.05/share, we calculate that WM has a current yield of approximately 1.84%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.05 against the original $55.62/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 3.31%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.” — Warren Buffett
