Yield on Cost

[hendi_alex]

If you go back that far, when WMT was still a significant growth story, the picture looks pretty good, as a total return play, though the dividend has never amounted to much. If you look at WMT over the past ten years, IMO it has been pretty much dead money, yielding a paltry 1% ten years ago and still a paltry under 3% now. Even calculating the very misleading YOC, the yield is still just modest for the person who bought at between $50 and $60 ten years ago. With the share price at its current lofty levels, even the ten year total return looks pretty good. I'm not saying that WMT wasn't a decent investment over the past ten years, but as a pure income play, it has nothing that attracted me then and has even less to offer me now.