Beating the Odds by Eddie Brown

Author:Eddie Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2011-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Pulling the Trigger on Investments

J. Irwin Miller monitors the clicking of an internal clock.

And everyone at Irwin Management is keenly aware that when his timepiece gets to a certain point, there will probably be a profound impact on our livelihoods.

For some reason, Miller has decreed that once employees of Irwin Management, Cummins Engine, and Irwin Union Bank & Trust reach 65, they need to be put out to pasture. Mothballed. Retired.

Personally, I fail to see the wisdom in this, because I know people 65 and older who are still vital and active and who have an awful lot of wisdom and experience to impart. After I start my own firm I continue to work into my seventies and have treasured investment professionals on my team who are older than I am.

However, Miller’s the kingpin around Irwin Management Co., and does as he pleases.

It’s currently May 1973 and Miller happens to be 63. I figure that when he turns 65 and steps down from the chairmanship of Irwin Management and Cummins Engine, he’s not going to need 85 Irwin Management employees to oversee his family’s assets and provide financial services. He’ll have enough free time to take care of some of those functions himself, if he so pleases.

I’ve been at Irwin Management going on three years now, and I consider myself pretty fluent in regard to the language and operations of marketable securities. That’s not to say that I don’t have more to learn—there’s always more to learn. But I feel as though I’m ready to become a portfolio manager, giving me green-light authority in terms of allocating millions of dollars to make investments.

I don’t have that authority at Irwin Management, so I’m starting to think that it may be an opportune time to bring my tenure with the firm to a close. Stock trading and research are second nature for me now, and my stock-picking skills have progressed to the point where I can sniff out a dog—or a winner—a mile away.

The firm has basically been my financial finishing school after receiving my MBA from Indiana University. I’ve grown professionally and personally at Irwin Management, and Columbus has turned out to be a pretty neat place to live. However, my career ambitions, combined with the fact that J. Irwin Miller is retiring in two years, have convinced me that it’s time to start looking for the next job opportunity.

So I’ve been quietly looking around for firms that that will give me the power to pull the trigger on stock investment ideas. That’s the next logical step in my career progression. I’m also looking at firms that have a much larger client base than a single family.

I’ve even got my search criterion in pretty sharp focus: Which firm is the best among large firms concentrating on the growth style of investing?

After researching and investigating a number of financial firms, I find Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price the most interesting. Why? Because they basically created the growth stock theory of investing that I find so fascinating.

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