Lloyds‘ (LSE: LLOY) shares stay a preferred funding. It appears that evidently traders are drawn to the low share price, dividend earnings, and the truth that the inventory stays miles off its highs.

The shares haven’t been a great long-term funding although. Had an investor put £5,000 into them a decade in the past, they’d most likely be fairly disenchanted as we speak…

The share price hasn’t gone up!

On 26 January 2015, Lloyds shares closed the day at 76p. So let’s say the investor picked up £5k price of shares at that price. Ignoring buying and selling commissions, they’d have gotten 6,578 shares.

Now, on Friday (24 January), Lloyds’ share price ended the day at 61.8p. That’s 18.7% decrease than the price 10 years in the past. This implies these 6,578 shares would now be price £4,065.

That interprets to a lack of roughly £935. Ouch!

Dividends change issues

This doesn’t inform the total story although. As a result of Lloyds has paid dividends for a big a part of the last decade. I crunched the numbers and located that over the 10-year interval, Lloyds paid out a complete of twenty-two.7p in dividends. Due to this fact, with 6,578 shares, the investor would have picked up earnings of round £1,493.

So together with dividend earnings, the investor would have made a revenue. Total, their £5,000 would have grown to £5,558 – an 11% acquire.

That’s higher than a loss, clearly. But it surely isn’t a great return over a decade. Particularly when you think about inflation over this era. At one stage throughout that interval, inflation was operating at over 10%.

The price of holding on to Lloyds

It’s additionally actually disappointing when you think about the returns from another investments. Had the investor put £5,000 into London Inventory Trade Group shares (one among my favorite UK shares), that cash would now be price over £25,000. Had they put £5,000 into Apple shares (that are listed within the US), that cash would now be price over £47,000.

Even when they’d merely lumped the cash in a worldwide tracker fund, they’d now have almost £15,000. So the ‘opportunity cost’ of holding on to Lloyds shares for the long run has been big.

I’ll be shopping for different shares

Now, investing’s a forward-looking pursuit, after all. And searching forward, Lloyds shares may carry out higher over the following 10 years than they’ve over the past.

As we speak, the shares provide a horny dividend yield of about 5.3%. That alone may generate stable returns (though dividends are by no means assured and Lloyds has minimize its dividend up to now).

The inventory’s poor long-term monitor report spooks me nevertheless. So does the outlook for the financial institution, given the weak UK financial system and the large quantity of disruption in banking as we speak.

So I received’t be shopping for them any time quickly. I believe there are significantly better shares to snap up for my portfolio as we speak.