Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Greatest Investors


Yesterday, I was searching for something in Investopedia, and I got this article. I am presenting just a very brief gist of that article.

John (Jack) Bogle

Bogle founded the Vanguard Group mutual fund company in 1974 and made it into one of the worlds largest and most respected fund sponsors. Bogle pioneered the no-load mutual fund and championed low-cost index investing for millions of investors. He created and introduced the first index fund, Vanguard 500, in 1976. In 1999, Fortune Magazine named Bogle one of the four "investment giants" of the twentieth century.

Warren Buffett

Referred to as the "Sage" or "Oracle" of Omaha, Warren Buffett is widely viewed as one of the most successful investors in history.
Following the principles set out by Benjamin Graham, he has amassed a personal multibillion dollar fortune mainly through investing in stocks and buying companies through Berkshire Hathaway. Shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway who invested $10,000 in the company in 1965 are above the $50 million mark today. Now in his 70s, Buffett has yet to write a single book, but among investment professionals and the investing public, there is no more respected voice.

David Dreman

David Dreman's name is synonymous with contrarian value investing strategies. His first book, "Contrarian Investment Strategy: The Psychology of Stock Market Success" (1980) is an investment classic. He has authored numerous scholarly investment articles in the Journal of Investing, Financial Analysts' Journal and The Journal of Financial Behavior. Dreman has also written the highly respected "The Contrarian" column in Forbes magazine for some 22 years.

Philip Fisher

Philip Fisher was one of the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, recorded in his investment classic, "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits" (1958) are still relevant today and are widely studied and applied by investment professionals. It was the first investment book ever to make the New York Times bestseller list.

Benjamin Graham

Ben Graham excelled as an investment manager and financial educator. He authored, among others, two investment classics of unparalleled importance. He is also universally recognized as the father of two fundamental investment disciplines – security analysis and value investing.

His two seminal books, "Security Analysis" (1934), written with David Dodd, and "The Intelligent Investor" (1949) are considered by many investment professionals to be the best books ever written for stock investors. Both of these books have never been out of print and are still used as texts for university-level courses on investing.

He is also famous for being a teacher and mentor for Warren Buffet as well as for other well-known investors.

William H. Gross

Considered the "king of bonds," Bill Gross is the world's leading bond fund manager. As the founder and managing director of the PIMCO family of bond funds, he and his team of bond professionals have more than $600 billion in fixed-income assets under management.

In 1996, he was the first portfolio manager inducted into the Fixed-Income Analyst Society Inc. (FIASI) hall of fame for his major contributions to the advancement of bond and portfolio analysis.

Among other investing traits, Gross is famous for his ability to change directions without hesitation in response to changes in the markets. In July 2005, SmartMoney.com's Nicole Bullock observed that "Gross doesn't adjust to market conditions – he changes them! His views on the bond market are widely followed by professional investors and the investing public worldwide."

Carl Icahn

The "Icahn Lift." This is the Wall Street catchphrase that describes the upward bounce in a company's stock price that typically happens when Carl Icahn starts buying the stock of a company he believes is poorly managed.

Icahn is viewed either as one of history's most ruthless corporate raiders or as a positive force for increased shareholder activism, who seeks to correct the abuses of greedy and/or incompetent corporate management.

Jesse L. Livermore

Jesse Livermore was a highly visible stock trader and speculator for almost fifty years. He was famous for making and losing several multimillion dollar fortunes during his professional career.

Peter Lynch

Peter Lynch managed the Fidelity Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, during which time the fund's assets grew from $20 million to $14 billion. More importantly, Lynch reportedly beat the S&P 500 Index benchmark in 11 of those 13 years, achieving an annual average return of 29%.

He is also famous for several books including, "One Up On Wall Street" (1989) and "Beating The Street" (1993), which are widely considered to be mandatory reading for any investor.

Bill Miller

Bill Miller is the portfolio manager for the Legg Mason Value Trust (LMVTX) fund, which, under his management, recorded one of the longest "winning streaks" in mutual fund history. Between 1991 and 2005, the fund's total return beat the S&P 500 Index for 15 consecutive years.

Miller's fund grew from $750 million in 1990 to more than $20 billion in 2006.

John Neff

John Neff's average annual total return from Vanguard's Windsor Fund during his 31-year tenure (1964-1995) as portfolio manager was 13.7%, against a similar return from the S&P 500 Index of 10.6%. He showed a great consistency in topping the market's return by beating the broad market index 22 times during his tenure and was regularly in the top percent of money managers.

He was considered the "professional's professional," because many fund managers entrusted their money to him with the belief that it would be in safe hands.

William J. O'Neil

Bill O'Neil is a top-performing stock broker, inventor of the growth stock investing strategy, CANSLIM, author and founder of the national financial newspaper, Investor's Business Daily, which competes with The Wall Street Journal.

Julian Robertson

Robertson had the best hedge fund record throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It is reported that the compound rate of return to his investors was 32%. During his active years, he was considered to be the "Wizard of Wall Street." His hedge fund, Tiger Management, became the world's largest fund, which peaked at over $23 billion invested.

Thomas Rowe Price, Jr.

Price is considered to be "the father of growth investing." He founded the investment firm T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.

James D. Slater

Jim Slater is credited with inventing the price-earnings to earnings-growth ratio (PEG) and popularizing its use in America through his book, "The Zulu Principle" (1992).

George Soros

George Soros gained international notoriety when, in September of 1992, he risked $10 billion on a single currency speculation when he shorted the British pound. He turned out to be right, and in a single day the trade generated a profit of $1 billion – ultimately, it was reported that his profit on the transaction almost reached $2 billion. As a result, he is famously known as the "the man who broke the Bank of England."

Soros is also famous for running the Quantum Fund, which generated an average annual return of more than 30% while he was at the helm. Along with the famous pound trade, Soros was also cited by some as the "trigger" behind the Asian financial crisis in 1997, as he had a large bet against the Thai baht.

Michael Steinhardt

Steinhardt Partners achieved a performance track record that still stands out on Wall Street: 24% compound average annual returns – more than double the S&P 500 – over a 28-year period. What's more amazing is that Steinhardt accomplished this record with stocks, bonds, long and short options, currencies and time horizons ranging from 30 minutes to 30 days. There were few investment instruments over which Michael Steinhardt did not wield some mastery.

John Templeton

In 1939, with Hitler's Germany ravaging Europe, John Templeton bought $100 of every stock trading below $1 on the New York and American stock exchanges. Templeton's trade got him a junk pile of some 104 companies, 34 of which were bankrupt, for a total investment of roughly $10,400. Four years later he sold these stocks for more than $40,000!

Templeton became a billionaire as a true pioneer of globally diversified mutual funds, including the Templeton World Fund, which was formed in 1978. His flagship Templeton Growth Fund posted a 13.8% annualized average return from 1954 to 2004, well ahead of the Standard & Poor's 11.1%.

Ralph Wanger

Wanger was widely known for his witty and far ranging quarterly letters to shareholders as lead manager for the Acorn Fund, which, between 1970 and 1988 was one of the top-performing small-cap growth funds in the U.S.

Source

http://www.investopedia.com/university/greatest/ralphwanger.asp

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