108-year-old investor: 'I doubled my money in 1929 crash – and I'm still winning'

Investment veteran Irving Kahn, who has weathered every financial storm since the 1920s, reveals everything he has learned

Irving Kahn can still remember scenes like this from the Wall Street crash. 'When the Depression hit, there were bread lines and families homeless in Central Park with nowhere to go,' he said 

Three days a week, Irving Kahn takes a taxi from his flat in Manhattan for the short ride to the offices of his investment firm, Kahn Brothers.

Nothing surprising about that, you might think. But Mr Kahn is 108 years old.

His Wall Street career began before the crash of 1929 and over the intervening decades he has seen the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War and the recent financial crash, as well as numerous less-severe crises.

Through them all he carried on investing.

Many professional investors stress the importance of a long-term approach but few are in a position to speak about it with as much authority as Mr Kahn.

So, in an exclusive interview, Telegraph Money asked him to look back over his long career and recount the key events that have influenced his strategy as an investor.

“In my early days, the equities market was dominated by speculators looking for tips,” Mr Kahn said. “The only serious investing was done by a few large institutions that stuck to bonds and shares in well-established companies.”

In the feverish summer of 1929, speculation “had driven up prices to unreasonable levels”, he said. So he decided that the way to make money was to “short-sell” a particular share, meaning he would profit from a fall, not a rise, in the price.

^{Irving Kahn in the Twenties}

“One of my clearest memories is of my first trade, a short sale in a mining company, Magma Copper,” he remembered. “I borrowed money from an in-law who was certain I would lose it but was still kind enough to lend it. He said only a fool would bet against the bull market.” But by the time the Wall Street crash took hold in the autumn, Mr Kahn had nearly doubled his money. “This is a good example of how great enthusiasm in a company or industry is usually a sign of great risk,” he said. Read More