Dykstra the investment genious

Pat Jordan at Fortune Magazine, writes about Len Dykstra and how he has transformed himself into almost a stock genius:

In a previous life the Dude helped the New York Mets win the World Series in '86 and led the Phillies to a World Series in '93. After that season he became the seventh-highest-paid player in the game, at $25 million for four years, not bad for a leadoff batter and singles hitter.

In 1998, after a raft of injuries, he retired from his more than satisfactory 12-season career. He was known as Nails because he played the game and lived his life outside it as if he were as hard as nails.

Dykstra - who now makes semiregular appearances on CNBC and Fox's Bulls & Bears - did not morph from ballplayer to stock picker overnight. When he retired, he had $20 million invested in real estate and an additional $1 million in mutual funds - Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, Putnam. They grew to as much as $1.7 million but dropped to $400,000 in the correction of 2002. He went to the investment adviser who had put him into the funds and said, "What happened to my blue chips? You're fired. Give me my money."

He took the remaining $400,000 and stuck it into a savings account for a year. "I learned that mutual fund brokers are just traders in cheap suits," he says with typical hyperbole. "I swore that would never happen to me again. I had always been in control in baseball. This was the first time I wasn't in control."

To see the whole article use the link above.