The Davis Discipline: Fifty Years of Successful Investing on Wall Street Hardcover - 2001

First line

SHELBY CULLOM DAVIS WAS BORN IN 1909, IN A nice neighborhood in the town that inspired the famous question: Will it play in Peoria?

From the jacket flap

The story of the Davis dynasty is, in many ways, the story of Wall Street over the last half century. John Rothchild's sweeping saga chronicles the changing face of Wall Street alongside the financial escapades of one of America's most successful, yet unheralded investing families.

Three generations of the Davis family portfolio-patriarch Shelby Cullom Davis, son Shelby, and grandsons Chris and Andrew-take you through the canyons of Wall Street as they consistently beat the market with a growth-at-a-reasonable price philosophy and a passion for investing.

Born into a middle-class family in Peoria, Illinois, Shelby Cullom Davis was more interested in history than finance. That all changed in 1947 when, at age thirty-eight, he left his job as a New York State Insurance Department bureaucrat and plunged into investing using $50,000 of his wife's money. In the late 1940s, as the Dow reeled at 180 and Wall Street ignored insurance stocks, Davis went with what he knew best and built a dynasty from a plain-vanilla portfolio of insurance stocks.

With proven strategies and a frugal spending philosophy, Davis amassed a fortune from the postwar bull market of the 1950s through the glorious market of the 1980s. He passed his experience on to future generations but left nearly $900 million in trust for conservative causes, forcing his family to continue the dynasty on their own merits.

Son Shelby Davis took on Wall Street during the go-go market of the 1960s. He started a small investment firm and took control of the fledgling New York Venture Fund, which beat the market twenty-two of the twenty-eight years he operated it. Navigating the inflationary market of the 1970s was tricky, but Shelby emerged unscathed. Grandsons Andrew and Chris steered the Davis dynasty through the 1990s and continue into a new century as they use the refined financial strategies of the Davis family to challenge Wall Street and manage Davis Convertible and Real Estate Funds.

Although markets may change, the tradition of financial expertise does not. The Davis dynasty, built on the belief of "compounding machines"-companies that could multiply your investment-and the idea that long-term investing lasts a lifetime, has passed through two lengthy bull markets, two savage and seven mild bear markets, one crash, and twenty-five corrections.

With The Davis Dynasty, John Rothchild presents the Davis family, their investment philosophy, and Wall Street within a historical and literary narrative that is informative, entertaining, and engaging. Take a once-in-a-lifetime journey through Wall Street with one of the most successful investing families in America and watch how a dynasty was built.

Media reviews

Citations

• Library Journal, 08/01/2001, Page 126
• Publishers Weekly, 08/27/2001, Page 71