Walter Schloss

Walter Jerome Schloss ( born August 28, 1916 in New York City; † February 19, 2012 ) was an American value investor and fund manager. He is one of those people who find mention in the essay The Super Investors of Graham -and- Doddsville of Warren Buffett.

Castle was born in 1916 as the son of a Jewish merchant family and grew up in the New York City borough of Manhattan. After the first wealthy family lost among other things, the stock market crash of 1929 its assets, castle began in 1935 initially to work without professional training as an errand boy for a New York investment firm. Out of interest in their business practices he applied there as an analyst, but was rejected; one of the staff then referred him to the then newly published book Security Analysis and its author Benjamin Graham.

After military service in World War II, he received in 1946 a position with Graham's investment firm Graham - Newman & Co., where he met Warren Buffett, with whom he shared an office temporarily. Shortly before the end of Graham -Newman to lock made ​​in 1955 with an investment fund in the form of a limited partnership on their own. Meanwhile, earnings growth was the leading U.S. index S & P 500 to the liquidation of the fund in 2002 for decades far behind. Despite this success, the castle remained almost unknown on Wall Street for a long time.

Castle ' investment strategy was based heavily on the original methods of Benjamin Graham and remained far less by other authors and investors affected, as is the case with Warren Buffett. Castle had less the future prospects of a company in mind, but rather its substance. Also demanded by Philip Fisher and Charles Munger focus on a few and all the more larger investments not operational castle. He attributed this to his lack of ability, managers and business models to be able to adequately assess. Yet he had to adapt a little to the changed conditions its strategy over time.

Walter Schloss joined his life a close friendship with Warren Buffett. For both similarities also included strict frugality. Castle operational fund its initially of a rented half Rumpelkammer from a subtenant of the brokerage and investment firm Tweedy, Browne (sic). His son Edwin, who joined the company in 1973, remained next to Walter the only employee of the company.

Walter Schloss was married twice. From his first marriage, two children, his son Edwin, and a daughter were born. After the death of his first wife in 2000 he married again in 2001 and also survived his second wife. Castle died on 19 February 2012 at the age of 95 years at his home in Manhattan, New York from leukemia.