BOTTOM DOLLARS

Even the Great Depression was a boom time—for the few positioned to profit off market misery. Take Floyd B. Odlum, the “quiet, spectacled, sandy-haired financial genius” who sat out the 1929 bull run, predicting a crash, then amassed $100 million ($2.3 billion in today’s dollars) scooping up distressed investments for pennies on the dollar after Black Tuesday.

If you had wanted to run $1,500 up to $10,000 during the past four years, you would have had to do just about what Odlum did. Only he started with $15,000,000 and now controls $100,000,000! He believes in spreading risk by diversification; his portfolio includes banks; utilities; chain stores; farm machinery, petroleum, biscuit, shoe and automobile companies. “But,” he says, “in times like these you’ve got to do something else than just sit on a portfolio.” When investment trust shares were kicking around the Street at as low as 50 per cent of their actual value, it was not difficult for a skillful negotiator like Odlum to buy control quietly.

—Forbes, July 15, 1933