What Did It Take To Hold Costco Stock

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An initial $10,000 investment in Costco Wholesale (COST) grew to $65,142 over the past ten years, before dividends. The same capital placed in the S&P 500 reached $36,305. Holding Costco shares looks easy in hindsight, but enduring the volatility proved difficult. The real question is less whether you should have bought the stock than whether you could have held on. So guess first: how many times did Costco stock fall 20% or more along the way?

How Often Did Costco Stock Fall?

Costco stock dropped 20% or more from a closing high four times over the past decade, and one of those declines exceeded 30%. The table below details each drawdown alongside the performance of the S&P 500 during the same dates.

The deepest decline occurred in 2022. Between April and May of that year, Costco stock fell 31.5%, while the S&P 500 fell 13.3%. Investors then waited 18.6 months from the low, until December 2023, for the shares to close above their previous high.

What Was Holding Costco Through A Fall Like?

Consider the most recent example. Costco stock reached a closing high in February 2025 and then slid for 10.2 months. By the December 2025 low, the shares traded 21.1% below that peak. The S&P 500 advanced 12.5% over the same dates, leaving Costco investors to watch the broader market rally while their stock moved in the opposite direction.

The shares reclaimed their old high 4.9 months after that low, in May 2026. All four of these drawdowns eventually ended. Investors holding the stock during each slide, however, had no way of knowing that it would reverse.

Was Something Wrong With Costco's Business?

The business faced no such problems. Costco sells groceries and household goods to paying members in its warehouses, along with gas, pharmacy, and its own Kirkland Signature brand. During both the deepest and the most recent of those declines, that enterprise expanded. In the 2022 drop, twelve-month sales climbed 3.5% between the stock's high and its low, while the operating margin did not move. During the 2025 slide, sales increased 8.3% by the same measure, and the margin edged up.

Nothing was wrong with the business. The stock fell anyway, and a decline of that magnitude represents the risk of owning Costco shares. The sharpest one-day drop of the 2025 slide, about 6% on March 7, 2025, came after quarterly profit missed analyst estimates even as sales rose 9.1%.

What Selling Costco Stock Would Have Cost

Costco stock has advanced 136% since its May 2022 low. Investors who sold at the bottom of that deepest decline missed the entirety of the subsequent rally. Today, the stock trades 10.2% below the high it reached in May 2026.

These steep drops served as the price for Costco's ten-year gain. Only investors who held their positions through all four drawdowns captured the full return. When Costco stock experiences its next severe slide, the relevant metric to check is its sales, which rose in all four of these prior declines.

How To Act On COST?

Not necessarily on Costco Wholesale alone, if your goal is long-term wealth. Wealth is built by owning the companies that keep outperforming, the leaders of their industries, wherever they are. Here are two companies from Costco Wholesale's own industry that have beaten it. Over the five years to October 2026, Walmart stock rose 156% and PriceSmart stock rose 141%, while Costco Wholesale stock rose 111%.

Finding companies like these takes comparison across industries and sectors, and that is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does. It holds 30 quality companies in equal weight and, since its inception in September 2020, has returned more than 105%, ahead of a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap and Russell 2000. See how we find the leaders.

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