Page 813 - How to Make Money in Stocks Trilogy

Breaking Boards: Successful Trades and Lessons Learned 89

an oil analyst for six years before moving to Atlantic Richfield, where he was
in charge of Investor Relations. In 1995, he joined Arco and was appointed
senior vice president responsible for overseeing its pension fund and all of
the fund’s investments.
Kent had a team of 30 analysts working for him, each of whom was desig-
nated a different amount of money as portfolio managers depending on
their level of experience and performance.
The fund bought mostly growth stocks and was guided by instructional
lessons on chart reading by Bill O’Neil, who would talk to Kent’s team from
time to time and help them learn what traits to look for in the market’s
biggest leaders.
For five years in a row, from 1985 to 1990, Arco performed in the top
10% of all U.S. pension funds while following many of the CAN SLIM
Investing strategies.
In 1993, Kent was named president of Arco Asia Pacific and relocated to
Hong Kong, where he lived for many years.
He retired and returned to the United States in 2001 and began subscrib-
ing to IBD. Kent feels he has come full circle from being a young investor in
the 1960s who bought big name growth stocks, to overseeing Arco’s pension
fund, back to individual investing using the CAN SLIM strategies.
Kent says he “relies very heavily on IBD’s Big Picture column to stay in
step with the overall market direction. IBD puts all of the market and stock
information in an easy, useful form with all the fundamental data listed.”
He tends to hold big winners if he has a cushion and the fundamentals are
still strong. Kent is willing to hold a stock through a normal pullback pro-
vided that the chart doesn’t show heavy institutional selling. He bought
Apple in late 2010 and owned it through September 2012.
Kent helps other investors as the IBD Meetup leader in Montecito,
California, and says going through the lessons “is helpful and reminds me to
stick to the rules also.”

• KEY POINT •

• Hold big winners if you have a cushion as long as the stock
is going through a normal correction and isn’t showing
signs of heavy institutional selling.