I did the opposite. I figured that we've come out of every recession in the history of

recessions. Stock market has rebounded 100% of the time and if it didn't in this time

it would be the only time in history it hasn't and I bought more stock rather than sell stock and it was probably the best capital allocation decision I ever made because those investments back in

2008 probably are my biggest winners today just by the sheer fortune of being able to buy great companies at low prices.

I'm Ricky Mulvey and that's Ron Gross, the director of U.S.ing here at the Fool.

Over the summer, we're spending some time getting to know a few of the foolish analysts

you frequently hear.

For today's show, Mary Long caught up with Ron to discuss how a sitcom character kicked off his career, what attributes he looks for in new analyst hires, and lessons learned from tough times in the stock market. Ron, I have honestly, had the immense pleasure with being tasked with rounding up a number of different fool analysts and chatting with them a bit

about how they wound up where they are today, how they got started in investing,

and you were definitely someone that we wanted to talk to so thank you for taking

the time to to kind of walk me through your life, I guess.

Wow, how much time do you got?

No, it's my pleasure.

I love doing this kind of thing.

So we can start broad.

I mean, how did you you I know that you had an

investing career before you came to the fool, but we can rewind even further. How did

you find investing in the first place? All right set the scene it, it's the mid-1980s, I've actually told this story on Motley Fulwining before,

it's the mid-1980s and I love a TV show called Family Ties.

And in that show is a character called Alex P. Keaton, played by Michael J. Fox,

for Back to the Future Fame. And he's a high school student who loves economics and the stock market and maybe most of all money.

And I was just enamored with this character.

...