Stock Affairs to Remember

They say you never forget your first love affair. Fund managers, however, are a different breed. They never forget their first stock affair.

Take Robert Millen, portfolio manager of the $2.4 billion Jensen fund (JENSX), for example. He remembers the exact day he became smitten with shares of General Electric(GE). The year was 1969, and Millen was a senior in college applying for a slot in GE's management training program when he literally "saw the light."

"As part of the interview process, they took me to a light bulb factory outside Cleveland, and I remember being tremendously impressed with the manufacturing process and high quality of people there," recounts Millen. "I guess you could say a light bulb went off in my head."

Millen says he bought the stock but never took the job. Instead, he took a higher-paying offer from automaker Ford(F) before moving into banking and then finally into the mutual fund business.

So, is Millen still crazy about GE after all these years?

Absolutely. Millen raves about the company's impressive 14% average annual earnings growth over the past 30 years as well as its decision to pay out 40% of those profits to shareholders as dividends. GE is currently the Jensen fund's top holding, at 5.3% of assets.

Feeding the Fire

There's that old saying about how the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Well, as Don Hodges recalls, it was his stomach that led him to his first stock affair.

Long before Hodges moved to Dallas to start what is now the $264 million Hodges fund (HDPMX), he was a Merrill Lynch stockbroker in Oklahoma City trying to earn enough in commissions to feed three growing kids. In need of a cheap, quick meal, Hodges would drive his clan every so often to the lone McDonald's(MCD) in town. It was the mid-1960s, and McDonald's had only recently gone public, which is why Hodges still remembers the novelty of what has since become the world's largest restaurant franchise.

To view Gregg Greenberg's video take of this article, click here.