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The most fascinating phenomenon on Wall Street these days is the spectacular rise of the growth and glamour stocks.
For investors who knew how to choose well, they have made some tidy profits.
They have also created a new class of management millionaires who rank with the Rockefellers and the big rich of Texas, and who prove that—despite high taxes—it is still quite possible in the U.S. to get impressively rich in a short time.
Among listed growth stocks, none has risen faster than one that appears on the ticker tape as FAV—for Fairchild Camera & Instrument Corp. An investor who bought $1,000 worth of Fairchild stock when it was selling at its 1958 low of 19½, and held onto it, last week would have had nearly $18,000 worth of stock. Fairchild makes a long list of imaginative products, ranging from a new silicon semiconductor to the first 8-mm. home sound motion-picture camera. It is one of the Street's most cherished buys, ranking with such rapid risers as Texas Instruments (72⅛ to 214¾ in 18 months), Polaroid (97¾ to 215½) and Universal Match (46¾ to 271⅛on a pre-split basis).
A big part of Fairchild Camera's magic lies in the man who lent it—and several other companies—his name: Sherman Mills Fairchild, 64. Fairchild talks about his present and future products with all the excitement of a 20-year-old with his first sports car. He is the epitome of the new scientist-businessman-inventor who is the driving force behind the success of the growth and glamour stocks. Cut from the same Yankee tinkerer mold as Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, he never got an engineering degree—yet has more than two dozen patents in his name. He flatly says, "I have no urge to make money"—yet has piled up a fortune of more than $80 million.
Many Faces. A man of amazing versatility, Fairchild invented the first practical aerial camera when only 23, and to carry it. designed the first U.S. plane with a cabin for both pilot and passengers. He founded Fairchild Engine & Airplane Corp. and Fairchild Camera, of which he owns 22%. He is the biggest stockholder in International Business Machines (99,864 shares), which his father helped found, and one of the biggest of Pan American World Airways, which he helped build.
His interests range far beyond science and business. His love for popular music led him to found the Fairchild Recording Equipment Corp., a high-quality manufacturer of sound reproduction products. His enthusiasms include architecture (he helped design his own house), cooking (he studied at Paris' Cordon Bleu cooking school), jazz (he plays a competent hot piano), dancing, philosophy, tennis and—since he is one of Manhattan's most eligible bachelors—beautiful women. Almost anything can touch off a new interest: irritated one day at the way his matches blew out in the wind while he tried to light a cigarette, he designed a match that could not be blown out (by cutting a slot below the matchhead for air currents to pass through).