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Growing Rich - Arabictrader.com

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GROWING RICH WITH GROWTH STOCKS<br />

fund because I was focused on following different kinds of stocks, I<br />

called her. She saw it as a great opportunity as well,” he says.<br />

KEEPING YOUR FOCUS<br />

Maintaining your focus, in both life and investing, is something<br />

Davis has always taken very seriously. It’s also a lesson he has passed<br />

on to his six kids. He has three children from his first marriage, Andrew,<br />

Christopher, and Victoria. Like his father, Davis let them work<br />

for him during the summer. Unlike his dad, however, he offered them<br />

a real incentive to perform. “They were all given a chance to go out<br />

with me on many of the <strong>com</strong>pany meetings held in New York,” he<br />

explains. “It’s like going to a lecture and hearing management tell its<br />

story. After that, they would have to write up a one-page report, based<br />

on a format I gave them. It was to include a few statistics, a description<br />

of the <strong>com</strong>pany, a discussion of current operations, and its outlook<br />

for the future. If they did the report, they would get $100. That<br />

way, they could make as little or as much as they chose. I didn’t pay<br />

them until they produced a report.”<br />

VICTORIA DAVIS<br />

Victoria really broke the bank. “She was writing five or six reports<br />

a week,” Davis says. “Chris and Andrew did only two or three. But it<br />

was a good introduction for them on how I go about looking at a<br />

<strong>com</strong>pany. You hear their story and keep track of what happens. I remember<br />

Victoria heard the president of MCI when the stock was<br />

trading for around $3 or $4 a share. She told me to buy it. I eventually<br />

did, but she got the first double. A lot of my kids bought stock with<br />

the money they earned, and sometimes I would even match it.”<br />

Ironically, Victoria, 31, is the only one of Davis’ three eldest children<br />

not to enter the investment business. She’s a Harvard graduate<br />

who is now attending Stanford Medical School. She plans to be<strong>com</strong>e<br />

a general practitioner. His other two elder children, Andrew and Chris,<br />

initially took different routes, but now have high-profile jobs at<br />

Davis’s firm. “It was a big surprise that any of them came to work<br />

for me,” he says. “I never really pushed it. When they were younger,<br />

I used to tell them that it didn’t matter if they chose a different vocation<br />

in life; it would still be valuable for them to know how to pick<br />

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