Growing Rich - Arabictrader.com

GROWING RICH WITH GROWTH STOCKS
never dabbled in the market himself, largely because he didn’t have
any extra money. “My first stock purchase was about five shares of
Budd Company,” he reveals. “Budd made modern automated commuter
railroad and subway cars. I was familiar with them because I rode the
subway around Manhattan and used the commuter train to get back
to New Jersey.” The investment wasn’t very profitable, and Budd
eventually merged out of existence. “Mr. Budd, the founder, spent all
the money he earned on new devices,” Stovall explains. “He was more
of an inventor than a businessman. I later bought some tobacco stocks,
which did better. I guess I was attracted to that industry because of
my southern connection with Reynolds, plus the fact that the people
around me were smoking all the time. I invested in Reynolds Tobacco
and American Tobacco. But the stock market overall moved slowly
at that time.”
OFF TO COPENHAGEN
After earning his undergraduate degree from Penn’s Wharton School
in 1948, Stovall used the GI bill and a scholarship from the Danish
government to fund a year of graduate study at the University of
Copenhagen. “I studied political economics and Keynesian economic
theory,” he says. “It was a lot of fun and I met a beautiful girl there
named Inger Bagger, whom I courted diligently. She was a student
at the Royal Art Academy. We bicycled together all around Denmark.
Two years later, she came to the States and became my wife. We’re
still together.”
But it wasn’t a cut-and-dry marriage. Inger’s parents weren’t happy
about losing their daughter to an American. The war was still fresh
in everyone’s mind, and both of her brothers had been killed, one by
the Germans and the other in a freak accident. Her father was a
prominent physician and didn’t want to see his only daughter move
so far away. He felt that Americans were barbarians and didn’t like
the climate on the East Coast. It also didn’t help that Stovall was
Catholic, while the Baggers were Evangelical Lutherans. This was the
same obstacle Stovall’s parents had faced several decades earlier. But
like his mom and dad, Stovall eventually prevailed, and the two finally
tied the knot. “It was a struggle to get married,” he admits. “Maybe
that’s why we’ve managed to stay together so long.”
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