The Best Way To Beat Inflation: Use It

How Shelby Davis Became a Billionaire With Only One Kind of Stock

This is Porter’s Daily Journal, a free e-letter from Porter & Co. that provides unfiltered insights on markets, the economy, and life to help readers become better investors. It includes weekday editions and two weekend editions… and is free to all subscribers.

Editor’s note: Today’s Journal is Part III in a special three-part series of Porter’s personal guide to great investing. These concepts aren’t the basics, like the time value of money, but instead these are the core concepts that Porter learned from his most valuable mentors, like Bill Bonner, Harry Browne, and T. Boone Pickens. We encourage you to read Part I (use other people’s money) and Part II (never lose money) before reading today’s Journal. On Friday, July 4, we’ll take a break from our normal publishing schedule and, instead, Porter will be sending a video (to our Partner Pass members) detailing exactly how he puts these ideas to work in his own $18 million personal portfolio. As long-time readers will recall, there’s no such thing as teaching. There’s only learning.

Table of Contents

• How Shelby Davis Became a Billionaire With Only On …

• Tomorrow, Marc Chaikin Is Closing The Doors

• Three Things To Know Before We Go…

• And One More Thing… An Asymmetrical Opportunity

• Poll Results… Do You Invest With Leverage?

By 1948, Shelby Davis was a disappointment to everyone – including his wife.

The scion of Illinois’ most powerful political family, Davis was handed a life of wealth and privilege very few Americans can imagine, even today.

His family sent him to The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, America’s most elite boarding school. After graduation (1926), he walked across the lawn and studied political science at Princeton University (1930). Then he received a master’s degree from Columbia University (1931). And, in the middle of The Great Depression, his family paid for him to get a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva (1934).

What did the talented Mr. Davis pursue in life with his masterpiece of a global education? A wife.

In Geneva, Shelby met Kathy – Katherine Wasserman, the daughter of America’s wealthiest textile family (Fruit of the Loom).

And so, Shelby Davis, with every possible advantage, began to make his way through the world. Family connections landed him a plum job as a European correspondent for CBS. And then he latched on to one of America’s leading politicians, Thomas E. Dewey.

Dewey, as governor of New York, was widely expected to end up as president of the United States. If so, along with everything else Davis had been given, he would have been ushered into the very highest echelon of power and influence.

Davis was Dewey’s leading political analyst and the architect of his campaign for the presidency in 1944. But the campaign ended in an epic failure. Franklin Roosevelt won an incredible fourth term. Davis was out of a job.

Governor Dewey used his power to appoint Davis to a newly created sinecure position, the “deputy” superintendent of insurance for New York. And there Shelby Davis sat, wasting life away at a made-up government job that couldn’t possibly provide the lifestyle his wife expected.