Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

 
The Philosophy Matures 
2 5 3 
Most, but not all, of my business had been focused on finding unusual 
companies that would enjoy significant, above-average growth in future 
years. After the war, I would limit my clientele to a small group of large 
investors with the objective of concentrating solely on this single class
of growth investment. For tax reasons, growth was more likely to ben-
efit these clients. 
My other major conclusion was that the chemical industry would 
enjoy a period of major growth in the postwar years. Therefore, a high 
priority project on returning to civilian life was to endeavor to find the 
most attractive of the larger chemical companies and make this a major 
holding for the funds I was handling. I by no means spent 100 percent
of my time doing this, but in the first year after restarting my business
I did spend a rather considerable amount of time in talking to anyone I 
could find who had real knowledge of this complex industry. Such peo-
ple as distributors who handled the lines of one or more large compa- 
nies, professors in the chemical departments of the universities who had 
intimate knowledge of chemical business people, and even some of
those in the major construction companies that had put up plants for 
various of the chemical producers all proved extremely worthwhile 
sources of background information. By combining these inputs with 
analyses of the usual financial data, it only took about three months to
narrow the choices down to one of three companies. From there on, the 
going was slower and the decisions more difficult. However, by the 
spring of 1947 I decided that the Dow Chemical Company would be 
my choice. 
E PLURIBUS UNUM 
There were many reasons for the choice of Dow Chemical from the 
many promising chemical firms. I believe it might be worthwhile to 
enumerate some of them because they are clear examples of the type of 
things I seek in the relatively small number of companies in which I 
desire to place funds. As I began to know various people in the Dow 
organization, I found that the growth that had already occurred was in 
turn creating a very real sense of excitement at many levels of manage- 
ment. The belief that even greater growth lay ahead permeated the 
organization. One of my favorite questions in talking to any top busi-
ness executive for the first time is what he considers to be the most 

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