Growth Strategy When it comes to investing, Gordon looks for companies that will grow for years, says Arthur Byrnes, who is co-head of Deltec Asset Management with Gordon's son John. ``Despite the fact that he's an old man, he buys things not for a quick trade,'' Byrnes says. ``Al is a long-term investor, if you can believe that someone who's 105 years old can be a long-term investor.'' Gordon favors countries with economies that will support growth, and he says the U.S. has too much debt. He says he liked Petroleo Brasileiro partly because South America had been successful for Kidder. Wal-Mart de Mexico and EnCana, Canada's largest natural-gas producer, may grow, he says. ``I read that Wal-Mart was stationary but Wal-Mart's Mexican subsidiary was on the move so that was enough for me so I bought quite a bit of Wal-Mart Mexico,'' he says. ``EnCana was owned by the Canadian Pacific Railroad and so you knew that its background was business, not government.'' Sleep and Run A non-smoker who says he used to pay people to give up cigarettes, Gordon ran in the London marathons for the two years after his wife died in 1980. He credits his long life to exercise and at least nine hours of sleep a night. He would often walk or run between city centers and airports in New York and Los Angeles. He has three sons and two daughters, all between the ages of 70 and 55. When it comes to investing, at least one of Gordon's contemporaries agrees that overseas stocks can provide more robust returns than U.S. shares. ``Al Gordon is right,'' says Irving Kahn, 100, chairman of New York-based investment firm Kahn Brothers & Co. He says global wealth imbalances and the rise of extremists should give investors pause: ``You don't have to be too alert to see how much terrorism is spreading.''