By Raz Pounardjian | January 19, 2023 | View This Email In Your Browser

Sometimes it is good to switch things up and instead of inundating you with graphs and charts, I want to share stories and lessons of some of the best investors you have probably never heard of. 

Ronald Read

Ronald Read enlisted in the United States Army during WWII and served in North Africa and Italy. After the war, he worked at a gas station that he and his brother owned, and then worked as a janitor at J.C. Penney in Brattleboro, Vermont. Read was frugal, he would use safety pins to hold his coat together and would park his car away from parking meters to avoid having to pay for parking. He enjoyed dining at his local Friendly’s and legend has it that a customer paid for his meal because they thought Read could not afford it.

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

For over 50 years, Read invested in high-quality, blue-chip companies and never sold his shares. He regularly read The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. He held physical stock certificates (unheard of today), which made it difficult to sell his shares. Read held 95 stocks and while not every one of them was a success (he owned Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt), he amassed large stakes in Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive.  

When Read died in 2014, his portfolio was worth nearly $8M. He donated $4.8M to the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, $1.2M to the local library and left the remaining amount to his stepchildren, caregivers, and friends.

Grace Groner

Grace Groner worked as a secretary at Abbott Laboratories for 43 years. She lived in a one-bedroom cottage in Lake Forest, Illinois that was bequeathed to her. While Groner lived below her means as she never owned a car and bought her clothes at rummage sales, she enjoyed traveling and did so frequently. She was raised during the Great Depression which surely had an impact on her saving/spending habits.

(Source: Seeking Alpha)

She purchased her first shares of Abbott Laboratories in 1935 (she bought 3 shares for $180). After the initial purchase, she never sold a share and reinvested all dividends. She made numerous anonymous donations throughout her life and in 2008, she established a scholarship at Lake Forest College with an initial donation of $180,000. 

Groner died in 2010 at the age of 100. Her estate was worth $7.2M (most of which was Abbott stock), which was donated to Lake Forest College for scholarships for students who want to pursue service-oriented opportunities. Rumor has it that when the president of Lake Forest College found out the size of her gift he said: “Oh, my God.”  Her one-bedroom cottage was also given to Lake Forest College, where two female seniors live annually.

(Source: Gronerfoundation.com)

Edward Avedisian

I am obviously biased with this selection as Edward Avedisian is Armenian but his story bears noting. He was one of four kids born to immigrant Armenian parents and he grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. His parents worked in fabric and textile mills and even with their humble beginnings, he said his parents: “…were always doing something for somebody else.” 

Edward was a clarinetist for the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra. He was a bachelor until he was 57 and never had kids. He began investing in the stock market in the early 1980s, studied company SEC filings and even invested in Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). He used stock options and margin to enhance returns (I would not recommend this!) Avedisian stuck with his winners and did not go in and out of the market.

(Source: Asbarez.com)

Avedisian died this past December and donated $100M to Boston University’s medical school for scholarships and research. He helped open a K-12 school in Yerevan, Armenia (the capital of Armenia). He also made gifts in the memory of his brother and sister to the Rhode Island College nursing/pharmacy programs (his brother was a pharmacist and his sister a nurse) and the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research.

What lessons can we take away from these relatively anonymous people? Some of the commonalities they shared were that they lived below their means (sometimes too far below their means), never let money get to their head or change who they were, stayed invested for decades through thick and thin and found ways to give back to society. During difficult times in the market, these stories serve as a good reminder of what to do.

Thanks for reading!

Raz

Raz Pounardjian

Portfolio Manager

30300 Chagrin Blvd., Pepper Pike, OH 44124

Direct: 216.706.2811 Cell: 216.272.4320 Fax: 216.523.8380 Toll-free: 800.321.2322

[email protected] | www.carnegieinvest.com



Carnegie Investment Counsel is a registered investment adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The opinions presented are subject to change without notice. The information herein was obtained from third party resources, and Carnegie deems the information to be reliable as of the original date of publication. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index is a capitalization weighted index of 500 stocks designed to measure performance of the broad domestic economy through changing in the aggregate market value of 500 stocks representing the major industries.

Disclaimer: None of the people mentioned in this blog are clients of Carnegie Investment Counsel

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Groner Foundation, BU Today and Wikipedia.