Davis was born in Peoria, Illinois, and graduated from Princeton in 1930. He then did postgraduate work at Columbia and the University of Geneva. He had several successful careers as a foreign correspondent for CBS and as an adviser to Thomas Dewey, the then governor of New York.
After briefly working as an insurance commissioner, he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $33,000 and set up his own brokerage firm, Shelby Cullom Davis & Company in 1947. He worked there until his death at the age of 85 in 1994.
What was his strategy?
He also believed in interviewing management to see whether the companies were well run and avoiding any insurers who held risky assets. Ironically, he frequently took on a lot of debt himself, using credit to buy stocks while only putting down half the upfront cost.
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