And instead of spreading his bets, Rosenfield doubled down. Grinnell's endowment holds a total of fewer than 20 different stocks and mutual funds (and that's counting each of the 10 stocks in the Sequoia Fund separately). Many colleges have more investment managers than Grinnell has investments. Outside consultants typically slice and dice assets--putting, say, 3.5% in midcap growth stocks, 1% in small Japanese stocks, 2% in emerging markets bonds and so on. Each sliver has at least one manager, who in turn owns dozens, even hundreds, of investments. The result of spreading so many bets so thinly, and paying high fees on every layer, is sheer mediocrity: Over the 10 years through 1999, the average endowment earned 13% annually, while Grinnell's grew at 15.6%.

Finally, Rosenfield did as little as possible, seldom buying and almost never selling. In fact, he considers selling to be indistinguishable from error. Who can blame him? After Intel went public in 1971, Grinnell found itself sitting on a gold mine--but Bob Noyce treated it like a powder keg. Tormented by the fear that his fledgling company might financially cripple the college that had given him a second chance, Noyce began pestering Rosenfield to sell. "Bob was trembling about it," recalls Rosenfield. "He'd say, 'I don't want the college to lose any money on account of me.' But I'd say, 'We'll worry about that, Bob. We'll take that risk.'" Finally, however, Noyce wore Rosenfield down, and between 1974 and 1980 the college sold its Intel stake for $14 million, a 4,583% profit. "I wish we'd kept it," Rosenfield says. "That was the biggest mistake we ever made. Selling must have cost us $50 million, maybe more."

Then Rosenfield locks eyes with me and asks, "What do you think?" Hmm, I mutter, it might have cost a little more than $50 million; I don't have the heart to tell a 96-year-old man that the shares he sold would today be worth several billion dollars.

Grinnell sold its TV station, WDTN, only because its value rose so fast that Rosenfield could no longer justify keeping so much of the endowment in a private, illiquid investment. The Hearst Corp. bought it from Grinnell in 1981 for $49 million, a 281% profit over a period when the stock market went up about 90%.

Rosenfield sold Grinnell's stake in Berkshire Hathaway for $3.7 million between 1989 and 1993--for reasons that must have been compelling at the time but that neither Rosenfield, nor Buffett, nor anyone at Grinnell can now recall.

What about Sequoia Fund and Freddie Mac? These investments leave Grinnell heavily exposed to the financial stocks that have been the skunks of the market for the past couple of years. In 1999, Sequoia lost 16.5%, while Freddie Mac dropped in value by 27%. Many investors would long since have bailed out, so I ask Rosenfield if he's worried about these bad short-term returns. His entire face turns into a befuddled question mark. "Why should I worry?" he asks. "There are too many people who are nervous Nellies and panic when a stock goes down a few percent. That's what stocks do! I think that [Sequoia and Freddie Mac] are eventually going to make the college a lot of money.

"There's all kinds of propaganda making people believe that impatience will pay off," he continues, "but impatience is a sure way to lose money. I've always taken the long view." He adds with a grin: "I've got nothing but time."