“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”
— Warren Buffett
The above quote from Warren Buffett is timeless, and brings into focus the choice about time horizon that any investor should think about before buying a stock they are considering. Behind every stock is an actual business; what will that business look like over a five year period?
Today, let’s look backwards in time to 2020, and take a look at what happened to investors who asked that very question about Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F), by taking a look at the investment outcome over a five year holding period.
| Start date: | 10/22/2020 |
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| End date: | 10/21/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $8.21 | ||||
| End price/share: | $12.56 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 1,218.03 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 1,584.36 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $3.23 | ||||
| Total return: | 99.00% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 14.75% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $19,895.89 | ||||
The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 14.75%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $19,895.89 today (as of 10/21/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 99.00% (something to think about: how might F shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Ford Motor Co. paid investors a total of $3.23/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 .6/share, we calculate that F has a current yield of approximately 4.78%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .6 against the original $8.21/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 58.22%.
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” — John Maynard Keynes
