Buy-and-Hold Isn't His Style

Foster Friess met his wife, Lynn, four decades ago at the University of Wisconsin, where she was a Badger Beauty and he was hoping to leave the dairy lands far behind. When I first met the Friesses in 1995 over Mexican food in Phoenix, they still held hands like campus sweethearts. More recently, they began pumping iron together and, this March, became grandparents. Yet for all this evident fidelity, when it comes to the growth stocks in his $7.5 billion portfolio, Friess is a regular lothario.

His flagship Brandywine Fund returned 7% in 2000, more than 16 percentage points better than the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. While it lost 11% this year through June, it remains ahead of most growth-stock funds, which on average sank 14%. A key reason is Friess's unfashionable habit of picking up and kissing off stocks as fast as he likes, without apologies. If Friess keeps a stock more than six months, it's a long-term affair.