“I Buy When Other People Are Selling.”

J.Paul Getty is one of  the world’s greatest success stories. The wealth he amassed in his lifetime was stupendous-estimated at roughly 1/900th of the entire U.S. economy. Today that would equate to $160 billion.

Getty got his start in the windswept oil fields of Oklahoma. In 1914, at the age of 21, he became a wildcatter, searching for oil in some of the most unforgiving land in the country.By the time he was 23, Getty had earned his first million (although $1 million in 1916 would be worth about $20 million today). But J. Paul Getty was not just an oilman. While he did make a fortune drilling for oil, he also made a fortune in a completely different place — Wall Street.As he put it.“In the Depression I did what the experts said one should not do. I was a very big buyer of oil company stocks.”

Consider the the story of Tide Water Associated Oil Co. Getty first bought the shares in 1932, in the middle of The Great Depression. The Dow had dropped from a high of 380 in 1929… all the way down to 40 — a fall of nearly 90% in three years. Investors had dumped everything. No one was buying stocks.Getty first bought shares of Tide Water at just $2.12 per share. Five years later, they traded above $20. And this is just one example of his success. Some stocks he owned grew to 100 times the value he originally bought them for.

Here is what he has to say about stock investing:

“Sound stocks, purchased for investment when their prices are low and held for the long pull are very likely to produce high profits through dividends and increases in value.”

“It is possible to make money — and a great deal of money — in the stock market. But it can’t be done overnight or by haphazard buying and selling. The big profits go to the intelligent, careful and patient investors, not to the reckless and overeager speculator. The seasoned investor buys his stocks when they are priced low, holds them for the long-pull rise and takes in-between dips and slumps in stride.”