The World's Greatest Investors

Great money managers are akin to rock stars in the financial world. The most successful investors have amassed fortunes as a result of their efforts, and in many cases, they've assisted millions of others in achieving similar results.

The tactics and ideologies used by these investors varied greatly; some devised fresh and novel ways to examine their assets, while others chose securities almost exclusively on instinct. The only thing that these investors have in common is their ability to routinely outperform the market.

11 Greatest Investors?

Benjamin Graham

As an investment manager and financial instructor, Ben Graham was exceptional. Among his many accomplishments, he wrote two investment masterpieces of unequaled importance. In addition, he is widely regarded as the founder of two important financial disciplines: security analysis and value investing.

The essence of Graham's value investing is that each investment should be worth significantly more than the amount paid for it. He was a firm believer in basic analysis, and he looked for companies with strong balance sheets, little debt, high-profit margins, and plenty of cash flow.

John Templeton

John Templeton is regarded as one of the greatest contrarians of the twentieth century, having bought low during the Great Depression, sold high during the Internet boom, and made more than a few excellent calls in between. Templeton founded some of the world's most prestigious and profitable foreign investment funds. In 1992, he sold the Franklin Group his Templeton funds. He was dubbed "probably the greatest worldwide stock picker of the century" by Money magazine in 1999. Templeton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his various achievements as a naturalized British citizen living in the Bahamas.

Thomas Rowe Price Jr.

"The Father of Growth Investing," according to Thomas Rowe Price Jr. struggled with the Depression during his early years, and the lesson he learned was to embrace stocks rather than avoid them. Financial markets, according to Price, are cyclical. As a skeptic of the crowd, he began investing in good firms for the long run, which was almost unheard of at the time. His investment view was that long-term investors should focus more on individual stock selection. Discipline, method, consistency, and fundamental research were the foundations of his successful investing career.

John Neff

Neff joined Wellington Management Co. in 1964 and spent more than 30 years managing three of the company's funds. His favored investment strategy was to invest in well-known businesses via indirect routes, and he was regarded as a value investor since he preferred companies with low P/E ratios and high dividend yields. He managed the Windsor Fund for 31 years (ending in 1995) and produced a 13.7 percent annual return, compared to 10.6 percent for the S&P 500. This represents a gain of more than 53 times the original investment from 1964.

Jesse Livermore

Jesse Livermore had no formal education and had never traded equities before. He was a self-made man who learned from both his successes and failures. These successes and failures aided in the formation of trading ideas that can still be found in the market today. Livermore started trading for himself while he was in his early teens, and by the age of sixteen, he had reportedly made gains of over $1,000, which was a lot of money back then. Over the next few years, he made money by betting against "bucket shops," which didn't handle actual deals and instead let consumers gamble against the house on stock price swings.

Peter Lynch

From 1977 through 1990, Peter Lynch was the manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund, which expanded from $18 million to $14 billion in assets. More crucially, Lynch is said to have outperformed the S&P 500 Index in 11 of those 13 years, with an annual average return of 29%.

Peter Lynch was often referred to as a chameleon because he was able to adapt to whatever investing strategy was working at the moment. Peter Lynch, on the other hand, kept to what he knew and/or could easily understand when it came to picking certain stocks.

George Soros

George Soros was an expert at turning broad economic patterns into highly leveraged, winning bond and currency trades. Soros was a short-term speculator when it came to investing, placing large bets in the direction of financial markets. George Soros launched the hedge fund firm Soros Fund Management in 1973, which later became the well-known and respected Quantum Fund. He led this aggressive and profitable hedge fund for nearly two decades, reputedly generating annual returns of more than 30% and, in two instances, annual returns of more than 100%.

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett dubbed the "Oracle of Omaha," is regarded as one of the most successful investors in history.

Following Benjamin Graham's ideals, he has created a multibillion-dollar fortune mostly through Berkshire Hathaway's stock and company purchases. Berkshire Hathaway shareholders who invested $10,000 in the company in 1965 currently own more than $165 million in the company.

For decades, Buffett's investing strategy of discipline, patience, and value has outperformed the market.

John (Jack) Bogle

Bogle founded the Vanguard Group mutual fund company in 1975, and it has since evolved to become one of the largest and most recognized fund sponsors in the world. For millions of investors, Bogle pioneered the no-load mutual fund and championed low-cost index investing. He created and launched the first index fund, Vanguard 500, in 1976. Jack Bogle's investing technique favors no-load, low-cost, low-turnover, and passively managed broad-based index mutual funds for collecting market gains.

Carl Icahn

Carl Icahn is an outspoken activist investor who utilizes his ownership stakes in publicly traded firms to compel reforms that will boost the value of his stock. Icahn began his corporate raiding career in earnest in the late 1970s, and his hostile purchase of TWA in 1985 put him in the major leagues. The "Icahn Lift" is what made Icahn famous. This is a term used on Wall Street to describe the upward spike in a firm's stock price that occurs when Carl Icahn begins buying stock in a company he believes is mismanaged.

William H. Gross

Bill Gross is the world's leading bond fund manager and is known as the "King of Bonds." As the founder and managing director of the PIMCO family of bond funds, he and his colleagues oversee more than $1.92 trillion in fixed-income assets.

For his contributions to the growth of bond and portfolio analysis, Gross was the first portfolio manager elected into the Fixed-Income Analyst Society Inc. hall of fame in 1996.

The Bottom Line

As any seasoned investor knows, finding your own path and generating market-beating long-term returns is no easy feat. As a result, it's easy to see how these investors became famous in the financial world.