CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
2023 brought challenges to all our lives, and my wish for each of you is a holiday season that is filled with love and joy. May you spend time with friends and family and renew a spirit that looks toward a brighter year in 2024.
THE LONG AND WINDING JOURNEY
No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is . . . a part of the main.
John Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral 1624
PROLOGUE
Being part-time employed has allowed me to reflect on the road I have travelled. People my age tend to spend a lot of time recalling the past. Too much reflecting can isolate us from the present, but remembering can sometimes be constructive.
“Life is what happens while you are busy making plans.” Our road often takes unpredictable turns. Perhaps others can learn something from an odyssey that started about 1962 and led me to this time and place in my 84th year. If any of several random events had not happened, my story would be very different. Maybe better, maybe worse, but certainly different.
How did a nationally ranked tennis player, a physicist, four tire retailers, an oilfield pipefitter and an Arab sheik, a Greek shipbuilder, and a cookie salesman shape my life? More than you might think - though most of them never knew, or hardly knew, each other. And some of them never knew me. But they all played a part in getting me to the profession I followed for 32 years.
I hope there are lessons from my walk - hard work, never give up, what you want isn’t always good for you. And most important, we all need help and good luck along the way.
THE TENNIS PLAYER
In 1962, I had a choice of a summer job in Florida or Delaware. Because I had a cousin in Delaware and knew no one in Florida, I chose the job at DuPont in Delaware. On a Saturday morning there was a tennis tournament at the DuPont Company’s country club. With no interest in tennis, but nothing better to do, I wandered over there. Players were warming up before the tournament. A girl left the court and walked toward me. She was a beautiful blonde with the brightest smile and brown eyes. Her appearance was flawless – something she maintained until the day she died. Never very good at meeting girls, I gathered the courage to introduce myself. She and I became constant companions. We saw each other almost every day for ten weeks. Then I left for my last year of graduate school. Three days after graduation, I went back to Delaware for our wedding.
A nationally ranked tennis player, she had been invited to play in the U.S. Open at Forest Hills at 17. But she gave up a life near the Philadelphia Main Line to marry a North Carolina redneck. Why? I will never know. But for 43 years she was my biggest supporter, my toughest critic, and the light of my life. Her support got me through the hard times, and she created the greatest times.
THE PHYSICIST [i]
My first boss after college encouraged my interest in the stock market. He was a savvy investor who found a stock evaluation tool developed by a man in Princeton. It was a crude calculator system (revolutionary at that time) that measured a list of stocks’ short-term earnings growth against their price/earnings ratio and ranked them best to worst. This system led me toward analyzing data with a computer and a stock ranking system. Fifteen years later, that system selected stocks for a major corporate pension fund.
THE TIRE SALESMEN
After studying stock analysis, in 1969 I was ready to launch a “career” in investments. An uncle and three cousins, who operated a chain of retail tire centers, gave me about $8,000 ($67,000–2023) to seed a limited partnership. That began a lifetime career, and I am forever grateful to them. Other investors might have come along, but these four had faith in me and they put a substantial amount at risk. Mine was a typical novice investor story. Over the next 7 years, the partnership lost 15%. The four never mentioned it. Not many investors would have stayed after a record like that!
But with experience gained in those years, the investments improved. During the next 44 years, the small partnership grew to more than $100 million, thanks to new investors and a return of 11.4% annually after fees. That return reflected luck (.4% a year – pure luck) and the good fortune to have invested in small cap value stocks. Even with the rocky start, my initial investors’ money increased 96 x in 51 years. None of the four ever withdraw money from the fund, leaving it to their heirs.
The little partnership might never have grown beyond its embryonic stage but for events happening 6,800 miles away, in a country I had never heard of.
More about that in Part II.
[i] The physicist was profiled in a previous post about the Manhattan Project. [LINK]
Good stories. Thanks for sharing.
Very interersting to read. Merry Christmas!