The Bronx-born mutual fund maven illustrates the value of education and hard work, and offers a trove of his best ideas for the current market.
The old cynical adage that holds that the best way to end up with a small fortune in the stock market is to start out with a large fortune does not apply to Mario J. Gabelli, who came from modest means but after more than 55 years as a professional investor has a net worth of $1.7 billion. Born in the Bronx to an Italian immigrant family who lived in an apartment above a delicatessen, Gabelli, 80, learned the value of hard work and education from his parents, neither of whom had gone to school beyond sixth grade. Gabelli’s enterprising spirit was evident from a young age, and so was his propensity to excel in Catholic private schools. As a boy, he traveled with his shoeshine box all over the Bronx and Manhattan, and from the age of 12 he began hitch-hiking and taking long bus rides to caddy for golfers at prestigious country clubs in New York’s suburban Westchester County: the renowned Winged Foot in Mamaroneck and Sunningdale in Scarsdale.
Many club members worked on Wall Street as specialists on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and their discussions during rounds on the course and afterward at the 19th hole inevitably gravitated toward stocks. The teenage caddie from the Bronx learned a lot from what he overheard and was bitten by the investing bug. Before he started high school at Fordham Prep, Gabelli bought his first stocks: Beech Aircraft, Philadelphia & Reading, IT&T and Pepsi-Cola.
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