In the depths of the depression, when she was already 38 years old and earning only a little more than $3,000 a year, Anne Scheiber invested a major portion of her life savings in stocks. She entrusted the money to the youngest of her four brothers, Bernard, who was getting started at 22 as a Wall Street broker. He did well picking issues for her as the market drifted upward in 1933 and '34. But his firm did not. It went bust suddenly, and Anne lost all her money.
"She was bitter with my father for the rest of her life," recalls Bernard's son Laurence, 41, a New York financial services salesman. "In fact, she got more bitter the older and richer she got."
Some of her anger at her broker brother seems understandable. After all, she had accumulated the money penny by penny for years by skipping meals, wearing clothes until they frayed and even walking to work in the rain to save bus fare. You might expect her to have turned against the very idea of investing as well. But not Anne; not for a minute. She rededicated herself to her saving and investing regimen with such a vengeance that it consumed her life--while also rewarding her with astonishing wealth. Although she never married, never even had a sweetheart, she did have one love: investing.
In 1944, 10 years after her big loss, she started fresh with a $5,000 account at Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Beane and slowly built the nest egg up to $20 million by the time she died last January, loveless and alone at 101. It's now worth $22 million.
Few investors, including the best-known professionals of our age, have matched her record. Her return works out to 22.1% a year, above the performance of Vanguard's venerable John Neff (13.9%), better than pioneering securities analyst Benjamin Graham (17.4%), and just below Warren Buffett (22.7%) and Fidelity Magellan's Peter Lynch (29.2%). What's more, Anne's basic time-tested investing style can easily be adopted by any small investor. It relies on dedication more than dazzling financial analysis, faith in major companies more than a flair for prescient stock picking, and patience more than the pursuit of immediate profits.
What are the lessons of Anne Scheiber's story? Here are eight investing tips--plus two concluding thoughts.
1. Invest in leading brands. Anne called them franchise names, by which she meant leading companies that created products she admired. For example, she owned Bristol-Myers, Allied Chemical and Coca-Cola. She also followed her instincts on untested companies. "When Pepsi-Cola came along, she tried it," says Fay, "and then bought PepsiCo when it was the new kid on the block."
2. Favor firms with growing earnings. Anne tended to ignore a stock's price-to-earnings ratio. Instead, she focused on the company's ability to increase profits. She reasoned that stocks are overpriced sometimes and underpriced others but it all works out in the end if the company's income rises year after year.
3. Capitalize on your interests. Anne always enjoyed movies. So she turned that pleasure into one of her investing themes by devouring Variety in search of the best entertainment companies. She scored big with Columbia, Paramount and Loews, as well as Capital Cities Broadcasting.
4. Invest in small bites. In addition to adding diversity to her portfolio, that rule automatically caused her to pick up extra shares when prices were low and avoid going overboard when prices were high.
5. Reinvest your dividends. It's the same principle as playing with the house's money in gambling, with this advantage--it's a sure moneymaker in long-term investing
6. Never sell. Or at least, never sell a stock you believe in. "For a long time in the rotten bear market of the '70s, many of her drug stocks were down, some by as much as 50%" says Fay. "But she hung on because she believed in them. She didn't panic in the crash of '87 either. She thought the general market had gotten overpriced, plus she was convinced her stocks would come back."
7. Keep informed. Anne went to all of her companies' New York City shareholder meetings. Rain, sleet or shine, she would walk over from her rent-stabilized, $450-a-month studio apartment in her trademark black coat and hat, buttonhole the CEO and demand answers, just as she did when she was an auditor. Then she would compare her notes with what the Merrill analysts were saying. Fay adds, however, that she also attended the meetings for the freebies. "Even when she had millions, she'd show up with a bag," confirms a relative. "If there was food served, she'd fill the bag and live on it for days."
8. Save with tax-exempt bonds. They provided more safety than stocks and cut her tax bill. When she died, she had 60% in stocks, 30% in bonds and 10% in cash.
In addition to those investing ideas, Anne's life also illustrates two other lessons worth considering, especially if you hope to end up with more than enough money as she did:
9. Give something back. Her $22 million gift to Yeshiva, plus an extra $100,000 she gave to an Israeli educational group, will help countless young women realize their full potential for years to come. Yeshiva's president Norman Lamm says: "Anne Scheiber lived to be 101 years old, but here at Yeshiva University her vision and legacy will live forever." One of her relatives who wasn't left a cent, New York City bank officer Dolly Acheson, adds that the Yeshiva gift gave her a "feeling of redemption." As she puts it: "At least in the end all that money went to a very good cause."
10. And finally, enjoy your money. As intelligent as Anne Scheiber was, she failed miserably on this one. She died without one real friend; she didn't get even one phone call during her last five years of life. Says her former broker Fay: "At some level, a recluse like her must get some psychic reward to keep going on that way. But to you and me, her life was terrible. A big day for her was walking down to the Merrill Lynch vault near Wall Street to visit her stock certificates. She did that a lot."
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