We like to highlight the people that do exceptionally well in every industry. In sports, there are all-stars and in Hollywood, there are super stars. We follow these people and try to know everything about them because if we can’t be like them, we can at least know about them.
The investment industry is the same, where there are many people we termed Legendary Investors. Here are a few of them:
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Warren Buffett
Warren must be the most famous of them all because he is currently still running his own company and buying and selling investments. It also doesn’t hurt that he is the world’s richest man!Recommended Books About Warren Buffett: The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life [1]
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Jim Rogers
Jim Rogers is a hedge fund [2] manager who co-founded The Quantum Fund in the 1970s and subsequently made 42 times the investment in the next decade. His fame however didn’t rise until after he retired in 1980 as he made bold calls such as predicting China’s huge growth, the rise in commodity [3] price as well as the credit crisis months before the gigantic collapse of the market in October of 2008.Recommended Books By Jim Rogers: A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing [4]
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Peter Lynch
Hired initially as an intern at Fidelity Investments, Peter Lynch eventually turned the Magellan Fund from $18 million under management to more than $14 billion. His most famous investment philosophy is “Invest in what you know” which is very easy to understand for the retail investor.Recommended Books by Peter Lynch: One Up on Wall Street [5] and Beating the Street [6]
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Bill Miller
Before 2007, Bill Miller was undoubtedly regarded as an legendary investor with his Legg Mason Value Trust outperforming the S&P 500 every year from 1991 to 2005. However, his many bad bets on the financial industries in 2008 has trashed his reputation as well as all the value he’s ever created for the fund’s shareholders through the years. While he is still managing the Legg Mason Value Trust Fund, many are asking for his resignation.Books About Bill Miller: The Man Who Beats the S&P: Invest with Bill Miller [7]. (note: buy this if you still dare)
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Benjamin Graham
Perhaps more an educator than an investor, Benjamin Graham is considered one of the first to teach about value investing. His students included the likes of Warren Buffett and was very influential in providing his students with a sound investment framework. In fact, Warren Buffett described Graham as the second most influential person after Buffett’s own father.Recommended Books by Benjamin Graham: Security Analysis [8] and The Intelligent Investor [9]
Whether you agree with their investment philosophy or not, you can’t deny the success (through skill or luck) they’ve had in the past. However, as Bill Miller’s case pointed out, if it’s hard enough to pick consistent winning investments, it might be harder to pick a fund manager who will consistently out perform the board market!