Joel Greenblatt: Early life and education

Early life and education[edit]

Greenblatt was born in Great Neck, New York. His family was Jewish.^[2] Greenblatt is a graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.S. in 1979 and M.B.A. in 1980.^[3]

John C. Bogle: Wealth and philanthropy

Wealth and philanthropy[edit]

As of February 2017, Bogle has a net worth of $80 million USD according to Business Insider.^[14][15] During his high-earning years at Vanguard he regularly gave half his salary to charity, including Blair Academy and Princeton.^[9]

Awards and honors[edit]

• Named one of the investment industry's four "Giants of the 20th Century" by Fortune magazine in 1999.
• Awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award from Princeton University for "distinguished achievement in the Nation's service" (1999).
• Named one of the "world's 100 most powerful and influential people" by Time magazine in 2004.^[16]
• Institutional Investor's Lifetime Achievement Award (2004).

Seth Klarman: Publications and works

Publications and works[edit]

Klarman has written many annual letters to shareholders but has kept a limited role in writing articles, opinion editorials or books. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he discussed the popularity of his shareholder's letters and a request on behalf of HarperCollins to write and publish a book on investing.^[42] He followed up on this request by publishing his first and as of February 2017, his only book, Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor, a reflection of value investing found in his hedge fund. In the book he outlines the various issues with retail investing, and critiques small time investors getting into the market purely using metrics such as price momentum and losing money in the long run. He issues that this is speculation and at times gambling, and should be discouraged in the market place. The book asserts that more people should become value investors or people who invest in stocks that trade below their underlying value so as to purchase them at a discount.^[43]

The book had amassed a cult following among retail investors, professional and institutional investors as well as Wall Street as a whole.^[44][40][45] Due to "only 5,000 copies [being sold],"^[42] the book has gone out of print and has become a relic in the finance community. Originally the book was priced at $25 a copy, however, due to it being out of print it has a market price of $700 for used versions with newer copies going for $2,500 to $4,000.^[43][1] University libraries report the book as "one of their most wait-listed titles as well as one most claimed as lost."^[43] He has stated that he would be interested in holding a charity event where he bids his book to Wall Street executives.^[42]

He edited the 6th edition of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd's Security Analysis in 2008.^[46][47]

Klarman's published books and substantial writings are listed below:

• Klarman, Seth. Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor. HarperCollins.

Seth Klarman

Seth Andrew Klarman (born May 21, 1957)^[2][3] is an American investor and hedge fund manager. He is known as a value investor and is currently the chief executive and portfolio manager of the Baupost Group, a Boston-based private investment partnership he founded in 1982.

He closely follows the investment philosophy of Benjamin Graham and is known for buying unpopular assets while they are undervalued, seeking a margin of safety and profiting off of their rise in price. Since his fund's $27 million-dollar inception to 2008 he has realized a 20 percent compound return-on-investment and as of 2016 manages $31 billion in assets.

In February 2018, Forbes Magazine listed his personal fortune at US$1.50 billion. In 2015, Klarman was listed as the 15th highest earning hedge fund manager in the world.^[1] In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame.^[4] He has drawn numerous comparisons to fellow value investor Warren Buffett, and akin to Buffett's notation as the "Oracle of Omaha," he is known as the "Oracle of Boston."^[5

Philip Arthur Fisher

Philip Arthur Fisher (September 8, 1907 – March 11, 2004) was an American stock investor best known as the author of Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, a guide to investing that has remained in print ever since it was first published in 1958.

Career[edit]

Philip Fisher's career began in 1928 when he dropped out of the newly created Stanford Graduate School of Business(later he would return to be one of only three people ever to teach the investment course)^[1] to work as a securities analyst with the Anglo-London Bank in San Francisco. He switched to a stock exchange firm for a short time before starting his own money management company, Fisher & Co., founded in 1931.^[2][3] He managed the company's affairs until his retirement in 1999 at the age of 91, and is reported to have made his clients extraordinary investment gains.^[4]

Although he began some fifty years before the name Silicon Valley became known, he specialized in innovative companies driven by research and development. He practiced long-term investing, and strove to buy great companies at reasonable prices. He was a very private person, giving few interviews, and was very selective about the clients he took on. He was not well-known to the public until he published his first book in 1958.^[5] At this point Fisher's popularity rose dramatically and propelled him to his now legendary status as a pioneer in the field of growth investing.^[6] Morningstar has called him "one of the great investors of all time".^[3] In Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Fisher said that the best time to sell a stock was "almost never". His most famous investment was his purchase of Motorola, a company he bought in 1955 when it was a radio manufacturer, and held it until his death.^[7] Phillip is remembered for using and proliferating the "scuttlebutt" or "grape vine" tool, in which he searched fastidiously for information about a company.^[8] When you scuttlebutt, you make more informed decisions due a better basis for analysis and valuation.

In the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, Warren Buffett called Fisher's "Common stocks and uncommon profits" a "very very good book".^[9] He further described how using Fisher's "scuttlebutt" technique continues to be a good way to investing, which is still used by Ted and Todd at Berkshire Hathaway. John Train described Warren Buffett as 85% influenced by Benjamin Graham and 15% by Philip Fisher.^[10][11]

His son Kenneth L. Fisher also founded an investment firm.