Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

These days, Lampert’s busy controlling Sears Holdings, but a dozen years ago he was a mere stripling of a fund manager. Tariq Ali* posts some interesting thoughts about Eddie Lampert’s approach to value investing:

Learning From Eddie Lampert

Ali doesn’t give the specific citation, but the Washington Post article from which he quotes appeared under Brett Fromson’s byline on September 10, 1995. Ali highlights several interesting quotes, but here’s another telling excerpt from the article:

Lampert, who is single, also has gained a personal fortune of $ 50 million. If he maintains his recent investment performance, then he too should become a billionaire.

Some people become billionaires more or less by accident, e.g. because they have a good idea or a good little company and they sell it at the right time. But Lampert became a billionaire on purpose. (By now he’s married with kids.)

Here’s a snarky question, asked from the sidelines of the current frenzy in the financial world: How many of the folks wigging out about the state of the markets aren’t following a path that could turn them, even accidentally, into billionaires?

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* Apparently Ali, like me, is a student at my beloved alma mater. But I’ve never met him — I only stumbled across him through the magic of the Internet.