“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”
— Warren Buffett
The wisdom of Warren Buffett reflects a value-based philosophy about investing that says investors are buying shares in a business, and encourages strategic thinking about investment time horizon. Before placing a buy order for a stock, a great question we can ask is whether we would still be comfortable making the investment if we couldn’t sell it for many years?
A “buy-and-hold” approach may call for a time horizon that spans a long period of time — maybe even lasting for a five year holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of Citigroup Inc (AMEX: C) back in 2020. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:
| Start date: | 11/06/2020 |
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| End date: | 11/05/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $42.71 | ||||
| End price/share: | $101.69 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 234.14 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 280.02 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $10.66 | ||||
| Total return: | 184.76% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 23.28% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $28,474.96 | ||||
The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 23.28%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $28,474.96 today (as of 11/05/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 184.76% (something to think about: how might C shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Citigroup Inc paid investors a total of $10.66/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 2.4/share, we calculate that C has a current yield of approximately 2.36%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.4 against the original $42.71/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 5.53%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.” — Benjamin Graham
