What Happens if You Invest $500 in This Stock and Hold It for 10 Years? (Hint: Warren Buffett Will Be Very Interested in the Answer)

1 hour ago 1

Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool

Wed, February 4, 2026 astatine 4:27 AM CST 4 min read

Let's play a what-if game. Imagine that you plunk, say, $500 successful Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B). (Note that Buffett precocious retired, and the caller CEO is simply a longtime lieutenant, Greg Abel, successful whom Buffett has expressed large confidence.) What would your involvement beryllium worthy successful a decade?

Here's a look astatine that question.

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A mad-scientist benignant successful a achromatic overgarment is making chaotic calculations connected a wide blackboard.

With a caller marketplace worth of astir $1 trillion, Berkshire Hathaway is simply a classical bluish spot stock. It's not presently a dividend-paying stock, which is simply a spot antithetic for a well-run institution of its size, but immoderate speculate that Abel whitethorn good institute a dividend. (The company's third-quarter study revealed a currency hoard that has reached $382 billion, aft all.)

If you put successful Berkshire Hathaway, you'll beryllium a portion proprietor of galore businesses wholly owned by Berkshire, specified arsenic GEICO, Benjamin Moore, See's Candies, and the full BNSF railroad -- and you'll person a involvement successful Berkshire's banal portfolio, too, which features large positions successful companies specified arsenic Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Bank of America. (Berkshire precocious owned 9% of Coca-Cola, for example, and 2% of Apple.)

So what benignant of instrumentality tin you expect from Berkshire implicit the adjacent 10 years? Here's however it's done successful the past:

Time Period

Average Annual Return

Past 1 year	1.60%
Past 3 years	15.53%
Past 5 years	15.91%
Past 10 years	13.90%
Past 15 years	12.49%

Source: Data from Morningstar.com arsenic of Jan. 29, 2026.

We shouldn't expect specified abdominous returns each year, though. Remember that the banal marketplace has averaged yearly returns of adjacent to 10% implicit galore decades -- and Berkshire is nary longer a modest-sized and nimble fast-grower.

Still, let's beryllium a spot blimpish and presume that the banal volition mean a full yearly instrumentality of, say, 11% implicit the coming decennary -- with oregon without a dividend. If it does, that volition boost your stake's worth to $1,420.

Here's what it volition beryllium worthy astatine antithetic maturation levels (since we can't cognize precisely however the banal -- oregon the marketplace -- volition do):

Growing astatine This Rate

$500 Becomes This After 10 Years