>>On the other hand, there are people who held INTC, CSCO, KO, PEP, MSFT, etc. since 2000 and still have zero cap gain twelve years later...<<
I question whether it's likely that there are any but a very few market participants who would hold a stock for twelve years without having any gains to show for it. Perhaps they would mostly be employees of the company. In which case maybe they get stock or buy stock, year-after-year to accumulate a position. In which case, ala Buffett's observation that if you intend to eat hamburgers year after year, you want the price of hamburger meat to stay low - the employees would want the stock to be low as they build their position.
As I consider ltb&h shareholders, I have to assume that if somebody liked something like KO or MSFT and if there were many consecutive years of nothing (except maybe dividends) and the person wasn't discouraged and selling out, then at some point or points, such as '08, '09 ( when stocks were beat down to multi-year lows), the person would be adding to the position. Or at least reinvesting dividends. Maybe the results of doing that (dollar cost averaging) would be satisfactory. Satisfactory enough to keep the person in the stock for 12 years and more. That would be assuming the person uses ltb&h as a strategy and therefore picks a couple or a few stocks. (Picking one stock, the wrong stock, would be a problem. I.e. just having only MSFT it would be one tough stock - no dividends until recently and no or negative stock appreciation over the 10-12 years. Or only holding GE even with its dividend-- that would be another tough one to hold I imagine if it were the person's only ltb&h stock. The stock falling from $50-60 to $10 over a decade before recovering somewhat. |
