The TSC Streetside Chat: Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson was one of the great stock investors of the past 50 years. He started with $15,000 and had a miserable rate of return in the early years. But from 1960 on, he turned $70,000 into $225 million over 26 years before retiring in 1986 at age 59. In his day, Wilson was a peer of Warren Buffett and George Soros.* Wilson's investment strategy was to go both long and short -- long because he believed in the long-term future of America and short because he never wanted to be wiped out in a downturn.

Today, Wilson is blissfully out of the money game. His fortune, approaching a billion dollars, is managed for him by a small posse of investment advisors -- some short, some long; some U.S., some overseas; some value, some growth; some large-cap, some small-cap. From an urban aerie overlooking Central Park, Wilson keeps a watchful eye on the markets. He spoke earlier this week with TSC's new Chief Markets Writer Brett D. Fromson. Wilson spoke candidly about his adventures on Wall Street, the pleasures and pain of investing and today's turbulent market.

*For more on Wilson, see the chapter on him in John Train's investing classic, The Money Masters. ...