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DAVID ALGER: Tales From a Lunch Table

 

For a generation of up- and-comers in the money world of Lower Manhattan, the scene was deeply familiar: David Alger's lunch table. Nothing fancy about it. Mr. Alger seemed to thrive on cheeseburgers and apple pie, and any nondescript Wall Street coffee shop would do. His stories are what live on, and the lessons embedded within them about the stock market, and about life.

"I can see him chewing apple pie and telling these stories," said Rob Lyon, who worked for Mr. Alger at Fred Alger Management in the 1980's and remained close. One of Mr. Alger's lunch lessons was that big companies cannot possibly grow as fast as little ones, and that problems in a company, or a life, can never fully be solved in one three-month reporting period. You have to look to the horizon, he would tell the young Turks.

Mr. Alger, who was 57, took over operations at Alger Management from his brother, Frederick, in 1995. But by then his impromptu lunch seminars were Wall Street lore, former pupils like Mr. Lyon said. And strangely, all the stories seemed to have the same opening line: "That reminds me of something," he would say.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times