Dividend stocks offer the unique advantage of simultaneously generating capital appreciation and passive income. Investors who own them enjoy the flexibility of harvesting their periodic distributions or reinvesting them to accelerate compounding.
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The best dividend stocks can turn even a comparatively modest investment into a small fortune relatively quickly. If you had invested $10,000 in these dividend stocks 10 years ago, you’d be a millionaire today.
Nvidia has been Wall Street’s number one growth stock darling of the last decade, but companies focused on growth reinvest their profits instead of distributing them as shareholder dividends, right? Most, but not all.
Per Nasdaq, Nvidia began paying modest dividends in mid-2013, so investors who jumped on board in mid-2015 would have been reaping or reinvesting them for the last decade, a period of extraordinary growth for the company. Here’s how your $10,000 would have grown over the last 10 years had you harvested your dividends as income.
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June 11, 2015 share price: 53 cents, according to Macrotrends
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June 11, 2025 share price: $142.83, according to Macrotrends
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Returns: 26,849.06%
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10-year ROI excluding dividends: $2,684,906
Reinvesting dividends can magnify gains exponentially. However, calculating long-term gains with a DRIP (dividend reinvestment plan) is more complex and inexact because dividend yields fluctuate over time, which affects the number of shares that can be purchased with each reinvestment, as does the stock’s always-changing purchase price at the time of the reinvestment. Also, growing companies often issue stock splits, which change the number and value of a given investor’s shares. Therefore, the calculation must rely on averages and close estimates.
High Yield Savings Offers
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Initial purchase: 18,868 shares
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Stock splits since 2015: 4:1 in 2021 (75,472 shares) and 10:1 in 2024 (754,717 shares), per CompaniesMarketCap
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Approximate average dividend yield over 10 years: 0.25%, according to Macrotrends
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Approximate number of shares after 10 years: 852,557
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Approximate ROI with dividend reinvestment at June 11 trading price: $121,770,716
Here’s how your $10,000 would have grown if you invested it in the land-holding company Texas Pacific in 2015. This calculation is even more complex than NVDA because TPL issued several flat-rate “special” dividends over the last 10 years on top of the standard yield, according to Seeking Alpha.