I'm a big fan of buy and hold investing and believe it is one of the best ways to grow your wealth.
To demonstrate just how successful this investment strategy can be with shares, I like to see how much a single $20,000 investment in certain ASX 200 shares five years ago would be worth today.
Let's see how investments in these shares close to the height of the COVID pandemic have fared:
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA)
This banking giant's shares have delivered the goods for investors over the past five years.
This has been driven largely to an incredible rally to record highs in both 2024 and 2025 following the release of solid results despite higher interest rates.
As a result, since this time in 2020, the ASX 200 share has generated an average total return (including dividends) of approximately 24.1% per annum.
This means that if you had invested $20,000 into CBA's shares five years ago, you would now have almost $59,000.
Goodman Group (ASX: GMG)
Goodman has been one of the most consistent ASX 200 shares out there for many, many years.
Thanks to the industrial property company's highly successful strategy of investing in and developing high quality properties in strategic locations globally, Goodman has reported strong earnings growth year after year.
Its recent focus on data centres has also gone down well with investors and sets the stage for its next five years of growth.
Goodman's shares have generated an average total return of 18.8% per annum for investors since this time in 2020. This would have turned a $20,000 investment five years ago into over $47,000.
REA Group Ltd (ASX: REA)
Finally, another ASX 200 share that has impressed over the last few years is this property listings company.
REA Group has been able to grow its earnings at a strong rate thanks to the dominance of its realestate.com.au website. This has been supported by its growing international operations.
In respect to its local operations, REA Group recently revealed that it had 12.3 million people visit realestate.com.au each month on average during the last quarter. And in total, there were 133.4 million average monthly visits, which is 3.9 times more visits than the nearest competitor.
This has ultimately led to the company's shares providing investors with an impressive 17.1% per annum total return. This means that a $20,000 investment in REA Group's shares in 2020 would now be worth approximately $44,000.
