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GROWING RICH WITH GROWTH STOCKS<br />
puters, which have dramatically changed the way I work. The analytical<br />
process remains the same, however. I still put my data together<br />
using the format I followed at Morgan. Among other things, I keep<br />
track of quarterly changes in sales, in<strong>com</strong>e, and profitability. One<br />
reason I think momentum investing has be<strong>com</strong>e so popular is that<br />
it’s so easy to retrieve this data electronically today. You can get information<br />
and react to it instantly. You couldn’t do that when I started<br />
out. Investing was a slower, cerebral process. These days you don’t<br />
have that luxury. If you don’t act quickly, you may lose your opportunity.”<br />
SWITCHING SIDES<br />
After Morgan Guaranty, Bramwell joined the sell-side research<br />
boutique of William D. Witter. For a short time, one of her colleagues<br />
at the firm was former Columbia classmate Mario Gabelli. “I covered<br />
specialty retailing and leisure time,” she says. “I was first runner-up<br />
in the Institutional Investor poll in 1975 and 1976, largely for work<br />
I did on Disney. I had conducted the supporting research on this<br />
<strong>com</strong>pany for Morgan Guaranty. The stock became one of the trust<br />
department’s largest holdings. We bought Disney before Disney World<br />
opened in September 1971 and saw our investment multiply several<br />
times from our original cost. My long-term earnings forecasts came<br />
out remarkably on target.”<br />
Bramwell made stock re<strong>com</strong>mendations to William D. Witter’s institutional<br />
clients. (Buy-side analysts work for such institutions as<br />
mutual funds, bank trust departments, and money management firms.<br />
They look for equities to re<strong>com</strong>mend to their internal portfolio managers.<br />
Sell-side analysts, on the other hand, often influence the purchasing<br />
decisions of those on the buy side. They are viewed as experts<br />
in the industries they cover and are employed by the brokerages and<br />
investment banking firms that bring various issues to market.) “On<br />
the sell side, there is a lot of marketing involved,” Bramwell explains.<br />
“You’re constantly out visiting institutional money managers. I think<br />
being on the buy side starting out is preferable, because you’re exposed<br />
to a greater number of industries and <strong>com</strong>panies.”<br />
William D. Witter was acquired by Drexel Burnham in 1976.<br />
Bramwell then joined the buy-side research department at Bankers<br />
Trust. She became head of a group that followed everything from<br />
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