Groucho Marx Writes the Greatest Shareholder Letter Ever

Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb has become well-known for the acerbic letters he’s written to poorly-performing management teams but let me assure you, he’s got nothing on Groucho Marx.

The famed funnyman got a glossy annual report from the Franklin Corporation in 1961, what follows is his letter to the president of the company…

From Letters of Note:

April 24, 1961

Dear Mr Goodman:

I received the first annual report of the Franklin Corporation and though I am not an expert at reading balance sheets, my financial advisor (who, I assure you, knows nothing) nodded his head in satisfaction.

You wrote that you hope I am not one of those borscht circuit stockholders who get a few points’ profit and hastily scram for the hills. For your information, I bought Alleghany Preferred eleven years ago and am just now disposing of it.

As a brand new member of your family, strategically you made a ghastly mistake in sending me individual pictures of the Board of Directors. Mr Roth, Chairman of the Board, merely looks sinister. You, the President, look like a hard worker with not too much on the ball. No one named Prosswimmer can possibly be a success. As for Samuel A. Goldblith, PhD., head of Food Technology at MIT, he looks as though he had eaten too much of the wrong kind of fodder.

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Go Easy With My Money (Letters of Note)