The world’s greatest investors
Legendary investor John Templeton is best known for the Templeton Growth Fund, which he ran from 1954 until his retirement in 1992.
John Templeton was born in 1912. He attended Yale University, funding his studies partly through his winnings from poker games, then went on to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After working for Merrill Lynch, he became the finance director of an oil exploration company. He continued to dabble in the stockmarket, and bought a small investment advisory firm in 1940. However, he is best known for the Templeton Growth Fund, which he ran from 1954 until his retirement in 1992.
What was his strategy?
Did it pay off?
What were his biggest successes?
After his retirement he advised investors to get out of the stockmarket, only a few months before the technology bubble burst. However, his most famous decision was to buy every stock selling for below $1 on the outbreak of World War II. Within four years, his portfolio had quadrupled in value.
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Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.
He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.
Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.
As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.
Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri
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