Oppenheimer 60th Anniversary - 21

"Over its initial 10 years,
[the Oppenheimer Fund]
had the best performance
record of any mutual fund
in the country, according
to The New York Times."
1967

LEONLEVY

Working together, OppenheimerFunds staff members closely follow the market, then as now, using all available technological tools.

15% of assets in one stock were innovative to the
point of putting off some potential investors. Another
hurdle was that at the time the SEC forbade advertising that directly touted a fund's performance. Still,
since a fund's track record was public information, it didn't take too much effort for an investor to find the funds that were doing well.

SELLING THE CONCEPT
What the Firm needed was a more compelling way
to demonstrate that mutual funds in general, and
the Oppenheimer Fund in particular, were a good
investment. That called for a good salesman -
which is exactly what the Company got when Don
Spiro joined in 1962.
Employees knew from experience that Spiro
wasn't just any salesman. The Staten Island native,
who once sold meat from a truck, was a wholesaler
with the Dreyfus Fund before he joined the Firm.

One of his brokerage accounts while at Dreyfus was
Oppenheimer & Co.
Spiro had learned that Silvio Smilovici, one of
the partners at Oppenheimer & Co., had no interest in selling the Dreyfus Fund. Undeterred, Spiro
found out what time Smilovici went to lunch. With
him out of the office, Spiro took the opportunity
to persuade Oppenheimer & Co.'s salesmen of the
merits of his product. Later, when the Firm's sales
team was going over what they had sold, Smilovici
was surprised to see how much business they were
doing with Dreyfus. Someone confessed that Spiro
had been working hard to get the sales team excited
about the fund - and had clearly succeeded. Rather
than bar him from the offices, Smilovici asked Spiro
to join the Firm.
Spiro brought that same dogged enthusiasm
to the Company. He emphasized simplicity, and
Oppenheimer & Co. became one of the first mutual
The American Stock Exchange weekly price level index
for the opening week of 1967 is the lowest for that year,
and the index for the final week of 1967 is the year's highest.

1967

fund companies to promote what investing in the
Fund could mean on a personal level. "If you put
money into the Oppenheimer Fund, you could save
for a college education, you could save for going
into business yourself, you could save for your

1967
This graph from the 1967 annual report depicts annual results from
1959 through 1967 for a $10,000 investment in the Oppenheimer
Fund (with security profits distributions in shares and income
dividends in cash). End-of-year 1967 total value is $36,897.

1959-1974 Growth

and Transition * 21

Oppenheimer 60th Anniversary

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