“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
— 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 twenty year holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of Align Technology Inc (NASD: ALGN) back in 2005. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:
| Start date: | 11/25/2005 |
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| End date: | 11/21/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $6.90 | ||||
| End price/share: | $142.56 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 1,449.28 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 1,449.28 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 1,966.09% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 16.35% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $206,779.72 | ||||
As we can see, the twenty year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 16.35%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $206,779.72 today (as of 11/21/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 1,966.09% (something to think about: how might ALGN shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
One more piece of investment wisdom to leave you with:
“Taking risks is really the only way to consistently achieve above-average returns.” — Sam Zell
