Long-term investing at age 105

Bloomberg.com has an interview with Albert H. Gordon, one of the few surviving Wall Street traders active before the 1929 crash. He was a bond salesman at Goldman Sachs in the 1920s (a nice tie-in to the upcoming The Great Gatsby discussion at Book Cents). After the crash, he took over Kidder, Peabody & Co. Even with a good investment record, his reputation was made on his salesmanship. It’s interesting to see that he was able to win business by flying to meet customers long before flight was common.

But this paragraph is what caught my eye:

``Despite the fact that he's an old man, he buys things not for a quick trade,'' Byrnes says. ``Al is a long-term investor, if you can believe that someone who's 105 years old can be a long-term investor.''

I hope people can say the same about me if I make it that far…