“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 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 decade-long period?
Today, let’s look backwards in time to 2009, and take a look at what happened to investors who asked that very question about Illumina Inc (NASD: ILMN), by taking a look at the investment outcome over a decade-long holding period.
| Start date: | 09/21/2009 |
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| End date: | 09/18/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $41.23 | ||||
| End price/share: | $303.01 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 242.54 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 242.54 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 634.93% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 22.08% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $73,486.54 | ||||
The above analysis shows the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 22.08%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $73,486.54 today (as of 09/18/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 634.93% (something to think about: how might ILMN shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.” — Warren Buffett
