Last week’s question

Born in 1946 and based in Houston, I’m the largest marketer and distributor of food-service products in North America. I deliver fruits and vegetables, prepared packaged meals, fresh and frozen meats, seafood, poultry, canned and dry products, paper and disposables, and more. I serve more than 400,000 customers, including restaurants, hotels, schools, hospitals and retirement homes. I rake in nearly $30 billion per year, and my stock has advanced more than 1,400 percent during the past 15 years. I’m not a telecommunications equipment giant, but I sound like one. My name is an acronym for Systems and Services Co. Who am I? (Answer: SYSCO)

Smart investment

I don’t know if I can really call it a smart investment when I bought shares of eBay at $10 apiece back in 2001 because at the time I bought more on a “Hey, I know that company” instinct than real valuation. I’m glad I sold it at $55 in January. “That” I think I can honestly claim as being smart. Whether buying in again recently at $32 per share was particularly smart … we’ll just have to wait and see. Overall, though, the absolute smartest investment I’ve made has been in myself. Not only am I getting returns comfortably above the major indexes, but I’m getting an intense personal satisfaction from being able to say, “Hey, I done good.” That feeling alone is worth every word I’ve read, every dumb question I’ve used to expose my idiocy, every hour spent going over it again and again until I got it, every minute spent running a prospective stock through my MakesSenseOMeter(TM). – Tamarian Graffham, Tracy, Calif.

The Fool Responds: Investing in yourself tends to pay off well. Kudos!