Welcome to real visions how I got my start in finance this week Dave column professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University
Talks with tony greer about his unusual entrance into the world of finance. I
Started as a kid. I was thinking to go to Wall Street, and then I got diverted
I was kind of a science guy and I with the AG schools gonna go to vet school and then med school and then I
Ended up going to grad school in chemistry
But my dad taught me a lot. We had some amazing conversations that stock and
And I think it was around 1993
All of a sudden it just kind of clicked that I should pay more attention
I was one of the boomers who started to realize that
I had a decent amount of accumulated wealth and I started getting interested and we're in the middle of a mania, right
Yeah
and so it looked like that money was just growing on trees and so it got interesting and there was this one guy who
sort of
fostered it because he was a traveling salesman for Merck and
He would take all the CEOs of every company visited out talk stocks. And by the time he was done with the cycle
He could tell you stuff about stocks that you really almost shouldn't be knowing about right Wow
So got some great early tips made a fortune off them and then and then started paying attention. Wow, that's really really cool
And then we walked right into the dot-com bubble the beginning of it
So you had a chance to invest and write potentially make some money there
Although I don't know if that would be your cup of tea, but was actually I was a raging ball
Okay, I thought you know, I talked to my dad say this is transformational and then somewhere
Somewhere in the ballpark at a mid 98. I started to get really creeped out
I had conversations with my father and I said dad
I'm a little nervous about these markets and uh
And he was kind of non-committal and then at one point I said to him I said, you know I also fear
Of missing out, you know the famous FOMO line, right and and and he said he stopped me and he goes that's greedy
And I thought about it and I not long after that
I actually liquid it liquidated half of my mutual funds and
and and that was in in July and 98 and then in
Then the market tanked almost to the day right just luck
and I said if it comes back I'm gonna get rid of the rest because this is nuts and so it came back and by
Mid nineteen. I know selling everything I
Owned al I own welcome. I made seven fold off. Welcome and got out, right. That was a good one. Yeah
You're alive so pure lockdown, you know MiniMed warner-lambert out. There was just some great companies. Yeah, and
When you're at a ninety percent year right that how do you not get addicted to those kind of returns?
I ain't good. But but I sold and then all of a sudden I was the only guy a
Few people who was picking off picking up information from this sort of the very beginnings of the internet chatting world
Like I think probably some like Fleckenstein
right and
And and so by mid nineteen I and I had exited the market one hundred-percent
I didn't own a share of anything and I actually bought a gold I
bought it through Central fun to
Canada and I'd away two years for at the bottom and I kept buying it and buying it me and that the Nasdaq was going
Up, and the gold was going down and and and I was white not calling it pretty good
Then it turned
I also shorted the market
At that point and I've only done that twice. I will never do it again probably because I know how stupid I was
but I made about a thirty percent on that short to just on a dumb beginners Locke and and and then
Around a one I started thinking. I got a hedge inflation the inflation that never showed up, right?
I actually think it did but it didn't show up in the way that everyone thought it would it wasn't a raging inflation. I
Served by an energy and I actually as interest in the commodities. I couldn't find a way to do it right note to self
I was a stamp collector when you could when you couldn't find a stamp. That didn't cost much you go
That's the one you want to find right? I want to find a stamp as a kid
I had to send a New York City to get it. I made twenty fold buying that stamp
So in any event, so I started trying to buy commodities. I actually spent some time talking to Jimmy Rogers
Partner and Clyde Harrison. I think it was on the
Rogers commodity fine. I didn't like it something smelled wrong to me as too many derivatives in it
and so I just started and
Nanos lit up because if there's no way to do it
Then there's certainly not a mania right and so I so I started buying energy equities just through fidelity. I picked six
materials type of energy things and it's are buying so so I caught the energy run from
From sort of oh one all the way up to wonder when it's C. So it's I don't know it
I've blocked that out of my mind now
Somewhere out thirteen or something before it got the the tar bead out of it. Yeah. Yeah
So in a nutshell, I went I was a hundred percent bonds from 80 to 87
the crash
Caused me to ponder what equities were about as a white-haired old guy say, you know, Dave equities are good investment
You should consider it. And so I started going aggressive equities after the 87 crash it woke me up to him
well
And then I was in equities till 99 and then I went totally whack job and then and I've been that way ever since
yeah, and and so
my proudest performance was the decade of
January ooo, right from January 1st of 2002
December 31st of
2009 I compounded at 13%
and
Everyone else was bleeding Wells gold and the energy and writings all the right Stas the internet. I thought I was smart
I thought and then all sudden, you know, the beatings commenced
I mean it was time to throw the toaster over in the pool and they did
So the last decade has been for me the Lost Decade right? So I had since I don't short anymore
I would never shore it at this point
I I'll just on the side a lot of cash the equities I kind of went down with a ship on the
Gold it felt like the ship was sinking but then you know it sort of flattened out at twelve-hundred. Yeah, if you can't go from
260 to
1,900 if you can't take and drop to 1200 year in the wrong business
Right, so it felt bad but then it stabilized. I bought some more actually good and
And I'm just everyone's raving on, you know, 300% gained some in the S&P and I'm sitting there on the sidelines
You know collecting, you know, 0.01% fixed income and but you feel safe
Well, except for the fact that the clock is ticking and time is the scariest variable
right and the and and and I'm not keeping up with inflation if
at these rates and so so so time is the variable that has always scared me and a lot of people say oh
It's your friend. It's not your friend if you're in the wrong position, right?
From conversations with his father growing up to his financial awaking in
1993 call him self-described dumb beginner's luck and outsider perspective
Have helped him find his particular perch in the financial world for real vision. I'm drew Bessette
You