which is a good gauge ofinflation. In a nutshell, this chart tells you that if you had investedone single dollar in these different asset classes way back then, thisis what you would have at the end of 1995.
aPETER J. TANOUS
Wealth indices of Investments Yeat End 1924 » $1.00in the U.S. Capital Markets From 1026 ta 1996Index$16,400
$1900
5160
fie
u
 
»28 BSNS SS ES = GTSCtOHS 1008Year-End
Source: © Computed using data from Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation1996 Yearbook™, Ibbotson Associates, Chicago (annually updates workby Roger G. Ibbotson and Rex A. Sinquefield). Used with permission. Allrights reserved.
Figure 1
To make this exercise a little more interesting, let’s assume thatGrandpa and Grandma had decided to invest $2,000 for you in 1925.Grandma wanted to invest the money in stocks, because she figuredthose big companies would keep on growing. Grandpa had a different
6INVESTMENT GURUS
notion. He was somewhat of a visionary, you see, and he foretold thecrash of 1929, which would occur in just a few years, and he evenpredicted the depression, so the last thing he wanted to do with hisgrandchild’s money was risk it in stocks. No, the only way to assurethere would be something left was to put the kid’s nest egg in safeU.S. Government Treasury bills. After all, a company could go broke,but the U.S. government wasn’t likely to. So, not being able to agreeon a course of action, Grandpa and Grandma compromised (which,incidentally, is why they stayed married so long). They decided tosplit the money: $1,000 to stocks and $1,000 to T-bills. The charttells you what happened. Grandpa’s $1,000 grew to $12,870, at theend of 1995, barely outpacing inflation since the equivalent CPIending value over the same period was $8,580. Grandma’s stocksgrew your $1,000 to $1,113,920. So you are now a millionaire. Blessher soul. (Yes, I know the chart shows that if your $1,000 nest egghad been invested in small company stocks, you would now haveover $3.8 million, but let’s not push the example that far.) You cansee why stock brokers and mutual fund salesmen just love this chart.
A couple of postscripts. Grandma’s wisdom notwithstanding, sheonly made one decision and let it rest for 70 years. You and I aren’tthat patient. We want to do well, and we want to do well a lot fasterthan that. What’s more, Grandma didn’t have any gurus to guide herin her investment strategy. She let the market do all the work, andyou are about to hear some very convincing voices who think thatGrandma had the right idea all along. But you will also see that mostof our Gurus do much better than the market as a whole, and that iswhat we are going to strive to do as well.
Many of the techniques we use in my investment consulting busi-ness to select investment managers for our clients will be disclosedin this book. Indeed, we will put them to work in the process of inter-viewing the different investment talent. You will learn important riskmeasures used to analyze the risk investment managers take to achievetheir returns, and you will also hear about the importance of style ininvesting in common stocks. To set the stage, here are the criteria weused to select the Gurus:
An Investment Approach That Makes Sense
That sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But so many of the newer ap-
7PETER J. TANOUS
proaches in investing may sound good, and even foolproof, but theysomehow flunk the test of logic and reason. (I was educated by theJesuits so this is important to me.) I’m not talking about what theexperts think. Is this investment approach sensible for our money? |expect that from the Gurus. I don’t have to understand every detailof their complex investing procedures, but it had better make basicgood sense to me.
Outstanding Investment Performance Over Time
You will not find any hotshot, young wizards in this work. | reallyam baffled by people who think that novices with relatively shorttrack records can be great investors by anything other than luck. Inthis book, you will find only seasoned pros. Great beginners didn’tmake the cut. This is not a book about individuals who lucked outwith two or three great years in a bull market. What can you learnfrom that?
Low Relative Standard Deviation
If you don’t know what standard deviation is, you will soon, butthe short explanation is that it is a tool we use to measure the volat-ility of a portfolio. By comparing a specific portfolio’s volatility to,say, that of the market as a whole, we can assess the relative risk ofthe portfolio relative to the market. The theory here is that if yourportfolio’s volatility - how wide the range of ups and downs in priceis over time - is high, your portfolio is riskier than one with lowervolatility.
High Sharpe Ratio
This is a relatively new tool used in our profession to measure riskadjusted return. It is named after its creator, Professor William Sharpe,who won the Nobel Prize in economics and is one of our Gurus. Inplain English, the Sharpe ratio measures how much extra return youget for the risk you were willing to take. The theory is that if you areprepared to take extra risks, it is because you want extra returns. TheINVESTMENT GURUS
Sharpe ratio measures how good a job you or your investment man-ager did in achieving that goal.
Multi-Disciplines
We looked at managers who use different styles and size attributes.You'll learn the importance of style in investment management, ifyou don’t know it already. You'll also learn why it is important tolook at the size of companies you invest in. Simply put, some man-agers specialize in small companies, others medium-sized, and, stillothers, large companies.
These are the criteria used to select the Gurus. We often refer tothese criteria as “screens.” The analogy is to a screen which sifts data,or particles, or gold for that matter, so that you end up with onlythose results that conform to the criteria you set. I have purposelynot created a mechanical selection environment, one which, for ex-ample, might have ruled out managers who had not had an annualizedreturn of, say, 20%. Anyone can do that. We are delving deeper intothe risk-adjusted performance of great managers over time. We aresearching for the roots of investment genius, the traits and attributesthat contribute to greatness, to Guruhood.
You might also be wondering how much prior investment know-ledge you will need to enjoy and profit from this book. The answeris not very much. The fact that you have Investment Gurus in yourhands suggests at the very least you must be interested in investing.I expect that you have probably read one or two other investmentbooks at some point. If you haven’t, the best place to start is byreading The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, by Andrew To-bias. That’s one of the best investment books I have ever read and Iturn purple with envy over Andy’s writing ability. Like-wise, PeterLynch’s books.
Before we blast off on our journey of discovery, we'll start with alittle “flight training.” To get the most out of these interviews, youneed to understand how and why the different managers were chosenand what sort of questions we will be asking them. To make surewe're all talking the same language, I'll take you through a littleprimer of up-to-date investment terminology complete with examples.So, Part One includes some ground rules and a few definitions. Someof this information will be familiar, but you may not be sure exactly
9PETER J. TANOUS
what it all means. I’ll provide a refresher and an introduction to somereally interesting techniques now being used by consultants andother professionals to analyze returns and risk. There have been greatstrides in this area, and I think you'll be impressed. I want to quicklyadd that this is not a book for techies. It is important to me that thisbook be in English as you and I know it. Throughout this book, wewill explain complex and arcane investment terminology in plainEnglish.
In Part Two, get your ticket and grab your pencil and pad. We’reoff to the first interview. The interviews are really conversations withsome of the greatest investment minds of our century, those invest-ment managers who stand out from the crowd and display true invest-ment genius. We will also be speaking with some of the greatest aca-demic investment minds, people who have contributed enormouslyto the art and science of investments in common stocks. We need tohear these voices to understand the present state of investmentthought. As we move from one interview to the next, we will keepin the back of our mind what we have already learned and we willcorrelate the information we learn from our practitioners and the ac-ademics, in our search for clues that lead to the secret of true invest-ment success.
In Part Three, we’ll lay our notes out on the table and sift throughthe data. We will discuss the key points gleaned from our interviewsand analyze the results. The questions we seek answers to include:
¢ Is investing in stocks the most intelligent path to wealth for mostof us?
If we invest in stocks, are we better off doing it ourselves or lettingsomeone else do it for us?
Is it possible to consistently beat the market?Which style of investing is best?
What are the key characteristics of investment geniuses?
bull; What did we learn from the Gurus that we can use in our owninvestment program?
How can we replicate the Gurus’ success?Having heard what the Gurus have to say, we embark on our mis-
10INVESTMENT GURUS
sion of discovery, in full possession of the information we have ac-quired. Have the academics and top money managers discovered theultimate formula for wealth in common stock investing? Do the pre-cepts of the investment science of today correlate with the actionsand behavior of the most successful practicing money managers? Ifso, we’re on to something. Next we'll ask, how can each of us usethis information to maximize our own wealth.
One of the key things we will seek to learn is how to avoid mistakes.We will see how to reduce our risk by avoiding dumb investmentmoves. On the positive side, we will consider investment alternatives,investment styles, and, how to practically apply what we have learned.We will determine what the right investment strategy is for each ofus. We will also consider the possibility of having one or more ofthese (or other) Gurus manage our money for us. We'll examine howprofessional consultants (like me) select investment talent and putthem to work, and how you can put these techniques to use in yourown investment program. We will conclude with some specific invest-ment advice and sample portfolios you can actually use, based onthe techniques we will have uncovered in the course of our interviews.
One thing I have learned in thirty years: there are very few trueinvestment geniuses. Perhaps that’s why so few money managers everbeat the market as a whole for extended periods of time. So unlesswe throw away all the books and buy an index fund, we had betterbe very, very careful, and very, very clever in our selection of invest-ment talent or in our own selection of stocks.
By now, you know that I want more than anything for you toemerge from our time together a much wiser investor. Often peoplethink they can be as good an investor as Peter Lynch just by readinghis books. Really! (Where are the readers’ yachts?) Please don’t expectthat overnight you will become as good as our Gurus, but you cancount on being exposed to some of the greatest talent investing instocks and bonds, and stocks and bonds are what you and | buy mostof the time. Some of the Gurus manage mutual funds we can buy,others have high minimums most of us can’t reach. All have somethingto say that will help us enhance our own knowledge and wealth.
Thanks for coming along.TOOLS OF THE TRADE
In this chapter, I will review some selected techniques and termin-ology that will help us communicate with one another and with themanagers we interview. Don’t worry, this isn’t school and you won'thave to memorize any of it. In fact, you may know some of thisalready, but browse through anyway, it will refresh your memory.I’ve also included some newer techniques which we consultants, andsome institutional investors, use to construct portfolios and managerisk. As a bonus, I'll conclude with a little performance measurementtrick, which I promise you won’t forget, and which will change theway you look at mutual fund performance results from now on.
First, some basics.
Active Versus Passive Investing
Your most important decision, after you have decided to invest instocks, is this: should you try to do better than the market, or shouldyou simply settle for the returns the market has traditionally offered.
Active Investing vw Active investing refers to the practice of pickingstocks because you think they will do well, for whatever reason. Ob-viously, to be successful, active management must beat the marketon some level. Either we will strive to have greater returns than themarket, or we will do as well as the market, but with less risk. Mostof the Gurus in this book are active managers who consistently beatthe market. But it was important to me to include proponents ofpassive management, and watch the two sides fight it out.
Passive Investing v In passive investing, you are basically buyingthe market. This is the domain of the index funds, those funds thatemulate the performance of the market indexes. Most of the academicGurus in the book are proponents of passive investing; they simplydo not believe that you can beat the market consistently by anythingother than luck. Tell that to Peter Lynch and Mario Gabelli! (We will.)
Passive investing has gotten a lot more complex. Firms like Dimen-sional Fund Advisors use a variety of index funds in different alloca-tions to provide risks and returns that have stood the test of time.Rex Sinquefield will expound on the merits of this type of investingINVESTMENT GURUS
as will Nobel Prize winners Bill Sharpe and Merton Miller and theacclaimed economist Eugene Fama.
Should you invest passively or actively? You and | will take in thearguments on both sides. I will share my conclusions at the end ofthe book after we hear all of the arguments.
Measuring Risk
In trying to evaluate investment performance on a level playingfield, we must take into account the amount of risk a manager takesin delivering his or her results. Some of us are more comfortable withtisk than others. For that reason, we must be aware of the level oftisk we are being exposed to. This stands the test of reason since ahigher than average return usually entails a higher degree of risk. Putanother way, if I told you I could double your money, you might bewilling to listen to what I had to say. But if I added that the “risk” inthis proposition is that you could lose it all, you would probably thinktwice. In fact, that is precisely what we do if we go to a casino andbet a wad on the color red at the roulette wheel. If we're right, wedouble our money; if we are wrong, it’s all gone. And the chancesare roughly 50/50, forgetting the house percentage. Few of us wantto gamble like that with our nest egg.
But how do you measure risk in investments? There is no perfectway. The best the industry has come up with is volatility. In invest-ment parlance, high volatility equates to high risk, low volatility tolow risk. Volatility, in this case, is the range of price or value move-ment in a stock, a portfolio, or the market as a whole. As the theorygoes, the wider the range of price movement, the higher your risk.
Betav Beta measures a stock or portfolio’s volatility compared tothe market as a whole. In most cases, the Standard € Poor’s 500 indexis used as the benchmark for measuring the beta of a stock or fund.Thus, if the benchmark is 1.0, a beta of 1.1 indicates that your stockis 10% more volatile than the market. A beta of .85 indicates thatyour stock’s volatility is less than the market’s and so forth. You getthe idea.
Standard Deviation v There is another way to measure investmentrisk. Beta is relative, measuring volatility of the portfolio to thevolatility of the market. To measure the volatility of a portfolio, weuse standard deviation, which measures the price performance of your
13PETER J. TANOUS
portfolio against itself. A low standard deviation means that themonth-to-month price performance will fall within a very small range.A high standard deviation indicates that the value of your portfoliomay vary greatly from month to month. Here again, that volatilitytranslates into risk. Sounds pretty simple, right?
Maybe, but standard deviation is probably the most misunderstoodinvestment concept out there. Here’s one reason: Standard deviationis defined as the square root of the population variance. The secondreason is the formula:
 
Where Equals8 Standard deviationxX Sample mean (or average return)no Nurmber of observations
(ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?)
Okay. Let’s try to explain this in the kind of language most of usunderstand. The notion is that the wider the fluctuations in yourportfolio, the greater the potential risk. Standard deviation measuresthe fluctuation, or variance, over time. Possibly the most intelligibleexplanation I have heard for standard deviation is the following:Suppose you are planning a vacation and, quite naturally, you wantto be sure the weather is going to be good. You're traveling nextFebruary. You ask for the median (the midpoint between the high andthe low) year round temperature in several places and you settle ontwo: Honolulu and Minneapolis. Honolulu’s historic median temper-ature is 73.5 degrees and Minneapolis’ is 75 degrees. Both seem goodcandidates if you didn’t know any better. But if you picked Minneap-olis for your February vacation, you would be in for a nasty surprise.
14INVESTMENT GURUS
That’s where standard deviation comes in. Honolulu’s weatherstandard deviation is very low; Minneapolis’ is very high. The verylow standard deviation for Honolulu’s climate is due to the fact thatthe temperature in Honolulu has historically ranged from a low of 53to a high of 94. Minneapolis’ temperature, on the other hand, coversa much wider range and has varied between a low of -34 and a highof 105. Yet both cities have median full year temperatures of about74. Get the picture? (I am indebted to Katherine Burr, president ofHanseatic Advisory Corp. in Albuquerque, for this example.)
By the way, if you think this example is stupid, NBC reported thatthe Atlanta Olympic Committee told the International Olympic Com-mittee organizers that the average temperature in their lovely city is70 degrees. That tells you two things: the organizers didn’t knowmuch about standard deviation, and they obviously hadn’t been toAtlanta in July.
Measuring Return Against Risk
If we want to define the ideal investment strategy, it is probablyto achieve the highest return with the lowest risk. But that’s like goingto Heaven: it’s something we all want to do, but we’re not real surehow to get there. After all, if I were pretty sure that by taking moretisk, I could make more money, then it would be an easy choice. Onthe other hand, if the risk wasn’t real, it wouldn’t be risk.
This problem leads people like us to try to analyze the amount ofrisk we are taking and measure it against the rewards we expect toget and actually achieve. Standard deviation tells us that the higherthe standard deviation, the higher the volatility, and the higher therisk that we will lose or make significant amounts of money. Whatit doesn’t tell us is which managers are likely to give us that greatcombination of a high return and low risk. But never despair: we havetools to measure that, too.
Alpha ¥ We already know that beta measures the volatility of astock compared to the volatility of the market as a whole. If we wantto analyze performance, it would be awfully nice to know how muchof our return was simply due to the market as a whole, and how muchwas due to our (or our manager’s) brilliant ability to select stocks.That’s what alpha does. Simply stated, it measures the return that isnot attributable to the market. In other words, it is the added value
15PETER J. TANOUS
the manager achieved over and above the results of the market. Thus,an alpha above 0 indicates that the manager has added value. An al-pha below 0 indicates he subtracted value.
Sharpe Ratio V A fairly recent measure of risk versus return is theSharpe ratio, named for economist and Nobel laureate, Bill Sharpewho is interviewed on page 89. The Sharpe ratio measures the risk ofthe returns in your portfolio. It divides the return earned above therisk-free rate of return (usually what you could have earned if youhad put your money in Treasury Bills) by the standard deviation fora given period of time. The resulting number measures excess returnper unit of risk.
Did I hear you ask about the difference between alpha and theSharpe ratio? Remember, alpha measures the portfolio’s return abovethe market return after adjusting for the portfolio’s beta. For example,assume a portfolio beta of 1.0 (which means that its volatility is thesame as the market's), a portfolio return of 11%, and a market returnof 10%. In that case, the alpha is 1%, which is 11%- 10%. That, ofcourse, shows that the manager added value. But how much risk didhe take to get that extra return? The Sharpe ratio measures how muchtisk he took.
The Sharpe ratio is interesting because it gives us the ability todetermine how much excess return a particular manager can give usfor the increase in risk we are taking. Here are a few examples of ac-tual managers’ returns, standard deviations and Sharpe ratios for thefive year period ended 3/31/96.
 
CompoundAnnualized Standard SharpeManzger Return Deviation Retia
Private Captal Mgt. 2LE% o.85 255Dodge & Cox (balanced) 14.2% 5.49 190Bennett Lawrence 220% L378 1y8Raqnitathle Asset PHA 13.36 1 68S&P 500 (with Dividends) 14.65% 7 Ad 139
 
Courtesy: David B. McGrouther, Dean Witter, Palo Alto, CaliforniaINVESTMENT GURUS
The first thing you notice about the chart is that the standard devi-ations of the managers are all over the lot. So you wouldn’t necessarilypick a manager by that benchmark alone. The Sharpe ratio numberis more consistent. The higher the number, the more return you getfor the risk you took, no matter how high or low the risk.
In our example, Private Capital Management had a relatively lowstandard deviation and a high Sharpe ratio which tells us that thismanager gave us the best returns for the risk we took. Now look atBennett Lawrence. That manager had a high standard deviation anda relatively high Sharpe ratio. A look at the return figures show thatwe made more money with Bennett Lawrence, whose performancewas an exceptional 32.6% over the five year period. But PrivateCapital Management’s higher Sharpe ratio tells us that they did thebest job on a risk adjusted basis, even though the return was less.Note that all of these managers did better than the market (again ona risk adjusted basis).
Another way to look at risk is demonstrated in Figure 1, perhapsone of the most widely used charts in our business. Here, we plot thereturns and risk of various managers on a graph. We can then comparereturns and betas against a benchmark, usually the Standard & Poor's500 Index.
In Figure 1, Risk (beta, in this case, but we could also use standarddeviation) is measured on the horizontal axis and Return on the ver-tical. The intersection of the lines is the benchmark, in this case theS&P 500 (including dividends), which is, for all practical purposes,the market as a whole. The dots represent the performance of sixdifferent money managers over a five year period. You will meet theGurus from all six of these firms in this book.PETER J. TANOUS
Riek Return AnalysieFive Yoar Perlod Enging V31/96a6¥ ap96as 2sa= 15wm5e} bese Riek”a ooo Ono 1,00 1.60 200 2.50 3.00
 
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Courtesy: David B. McGrouther, Dean Witter, Palo Alto, California
Figure 1
You may have heard of the term “Northwest Quadrant.” To a moneymanager, that is the Promised Land. A glance at Figure 1 tells youwhy. A dot in the Northwest Quadrant means that over the measuredperiod, the manager achieved a higher return than the market, butwith lower risk. And that, of course, is precisely what we all want todo. Note that three of the managers on the chart are in the NorthwestQuadrant. Three other managers gave us a higher return than themarket, but with higher volatility, or risk.
Does this mean that all we need to do is find out who those
18INVESTMENT GURUS
Northwest Quadrant managers are and put our money with them?Not exactly. (You must have known it wouldn’t be that easy.) Unfor-tunately, some managers do well for specified periods of time for avariety of reasons. Perhaps they were very good at a particular styleof investing which was itself in vogue for some years. Or perhaps amanager specialized in a particular industry group that did quite well.In fact, consultants often refer to the practice of selecting managersjust because they are in the Northwest Quadrant as “chasing dots.”
A word about volatility: Managers with high volatility will argue(convincingly, I think) that high volatility is perfectly okay as longas the high volatility is on the upside. In other words, there is nothingwrong with high volatility that results in higher returns. To them,using volatility as a measure of risk is not meaningful unless thediscussion is paired with an analysis of the volatility on the way upand the volatility on the way down. We will talk about this subjectwith Guru Richard Driehaus, whose style is volatile, but whose resultsare phenomenal.
Not all of the managers we interview will be Northwest Quadrantmanagers. Some will offer much higher returns than the market, butthey will ask you to take more risk in the process. Fair enough. In thecourse of our interviews, we will raise the issue of risk with the variousmanagers to learn the role risk plays in their investment strategiesand how we can apply what we learn to our own investment decisions.
Investment Style
Most of us road warriors who travel a lot use CNN as our beaconfrom exotic locations around the world. Mention the word “style”and we instantly think of Elsa Klensch and her worldwide fashionshow featuring slinky models baring as much as the censors will allow.
To investment professionals charged with the asset allocation ofinvestment portfolios, the word “style” has a very precise meaningand the importance of style is increasing every year. In a word, stylerefers to the particular type of stocks that a manager chooses to investin. These, in turn, are distinguished by a set of characteristics thatthe manager looks for, and is comfortable with.
In this section, we will look at some of the predominant styles ofinvestment and discuss the merits of each. At the outset, let me quicklycaution you not to be looking for the “best” investment style. You
19PETER J. TANOUS
can make money using any of these styles, if you know what you aredoing. Many investment managers diversify their portfolio in theirquest for performance results, allocating funds to be managed in eachof several investment styles. We will be interviewing outstandingmanagers who are practitioners of many different investment styles.
While there are a number of different styles, two styles dominatethe field and are used and talked about more often than any of theothers. These are growth and value, and we will start with them.
Growth v We will be interviewing a number of growth managers,including the legendary Peter Lynch, Foster Friess of the BrandywineFund, John Ballen who runs the MFS Emerging Growth Fund, VanSchreiber, as well as some momentum growth managers | will tellyou about in a few minutes.
In seeking stocks to buy, growth managers seek a strong trend inthe growth of sales and earnings in the companies in which they areinvesting. Growth managers generally seek investment vehicles inindustries showing strong sustained growth trends as well. This alsomeans that few of these managers would be interested in buying afast growing company in an otherwise sleepy industry.
What constitutes growth? Well, that’s like asking how high is up?Most growth managers agree that growth, at a minimum, must exceedthe growth rate of the economy. By how much is the question.
Then there’s the question of price. How much can you afford topay for growth? Companies with high rates of growth sell at highprice/earnings ratios, reflecting the expectation that their growth willcontinue and “catch up” with the high valuations. Sometimes theydo, and sometimes they don’t, but, hey, that’s show business.
One thing is certain: if you buy growth stocks and pay a corres-pondingly high price for the privilege, if something goes wrong, youare going to suffer swiftly and painfully. A high price-earnings ratiohas little tolerance for disappointment. That’s why a disappointingearnings report from a growth company often causes a precipitousstock price decline. Investors in growth stocks had better be very sureof their earnings projections. That is why many of the growth stockinvestors have a habit of staying in constant touch with the manage-ments of the companies they own. If the president of the companyhas a headache, the portfolio manager may check him into the hospit-al.
20INVESTMENT GURUS
To sum up, here are the principal features of companies that growthmanagers look for:
e Attractive industry fundamentalse High rate of earnings and sales growth
¢ Reasonable price-earnings ratio (but a high price-earnings ratio isokay if everything else is right)
¢ Strong management
Value ¥ Value stock managers are like the people you find at Fi-lene’s Basement - forever looking for bargains. Fun, to them, is agoing-out-of-business sale. And that’s how they manage their portfo-lios.
The classic definition of a value stock is a stock with a low “BtM,”or Book to Market ratio. That means that the stock is trading at a lowprice compared to its book value. Book value is defined as the com-pany’s assets on its balance sheet, less its liabilities. Book value isoften figured on a per share basis. So, if a company has a book valueof, say, $15 per share, and the stock is trading at $12 per share, itmay be perceived as a bargain.
Over time, the definition of value has changed and we will en-counter different ways to approach value with our Gurus who special-ize in this style. (Our academic Gurus also refer to Value stocks as“distress” stocks, indicating that the underlying companies have someproblems.) Among the value managers we interviewed are Wall Streetlegends like Michael Price and Mario Gabelli; Laura Sloate, and BruceSherman. Eric Ryback of the renowned Lindner Fund,