He's one of America's greatest success stories. But despite being the world's richest man during his time, J. Paul Getty is almost forgotten today.
The wealth Getty amassed is almost unimaginable. At one time, his estimated worth was roughly 1/900th of the entire U.S. economy. Today that would equate to $160 billion -- four times Warren Buffett's net worth.
Getty got his start in the windswept oil fields of Oklahoma. In 1914, at the age of 21, he became a wildcatter, searching for oil in some of the most unforgiving land in the country.
By the time he was 23, Getty had earned his first million (although $1 million in 1916 would be worth about $20 million today).
But J. Paul Getty was not just an oilman. And while he did make a fortune drilling for oil, he also made a fortune in a completely different place -- Wall Street.
Consider the story of Tide Water Associated Oil Co. Getty first bought the shares in 1932, in the middle of The Great Depression. The Dow had dropped from a high of 380 in 1929... all the way down to 40 -- a fall of nearly 90% in three years. Investors had dumped everything. No one was buying stocks.
Getty first bought shares of Tide Water at just $2.12 per share. Five years later, they traded above $20. And this is just one example of his success. Some stocks he owned grew to 100 times the value he originally bought them for.
