"Finance is OK if You've Got Money"
I knew at a pretty early age that I was interested in finance. I remember begging my father to let me take my lawn mowing money and buy a stock with it. The only one he would let me buy was A T & T, which proved to be a modest loser. But in my second job, as a dock boy at a local marina, I used to listen to some of the boat owners talk to their brokers over the pay phone in our office. One guy in particular convinced me of the merits of a stock called Lear Siegler. Founded by Learjet inventor William Lear, they had developed an automated system for landing planes in zero visibility situations (this was in the 1960s, mind you). I was convinced to buy, and since I already had the account from the A T & T, I called the broker myself and invested a summer’s worth of lawn mowing money, buying 100 shares of Lear at 12 5/8. I remember the first few weeks of owning that stock. My pay as a dock boy was $1.25 per hour, so every 1/8 that Lear went up or down represented more than a day’s