Born (29 November 1912 – 8 July 2008), John Templeton was an American, British investor, banker, fund manager, and philanthropist.

John Templeton was born in Winchester, Tennessee, in 1912. To continue his university-level education, he got a scholarship from a low-income family, but he was a good student.
He was one of the best students of economics at Yale University. He graduated in 1934, right in the midst of the Depression. He mastered at Oxford two years later. When he returned to the USA, he worked in a New York-based Fenner&Beane company, where he was a trainee.

John Templeton was a co-founder of a company known as Templeton, Dobbrow & Vance at the end of the Depression in 1937. Their company became worth about 300 million dollars quickly, and under their management, they had 8 mutual funds. John Templeton founded a fund in the Bahamas in 1954. The old company changed the name not long before Templeton sold his share of the company in 1962.

He was known for creating successful funds during his career. In 1992 the Franklin Group bought his funds. Queen Elizabeth II made him a knight, as he was a naturalized British citizen, because of his great achievements.

His John Templeton Foundation is one of the world’s most recognized foundations that donate most of its funds to scientific research.

John Templeton trading style
His investing methods were by many carved during the time he studied, as it was during the Great Depression.

He was looking to buy stocks of companies around the world. He saw an opportunity to profit by acquiring many small companies that were low priced with a good long-term perspective.
He made success with stocks that other investors would bother to research. He found those companies through his connections that would gather at his Lyford Key Club in the Bahamas – his home – where he would discuss with them about that sort of companies nobody would want to look at in terms of investing.
He preferred communicating with his friends and other investors at his own terrain, literally his own, in a casual atmosphere at his Lyford Key Club, rather than in the Wall Street, where everything was fast, and the information was way too formal, which – for him – meant that the information was not accurate. Therefore, he would create an attractive ambiance for the people who would gladly discuss matters with him. He saw people as the power for his research.

Ben Graham
Ben Graham was born in London in 1894, and he passed away at the age of 82 in 1976. He is a matchless investment manager and a surpassing financial educator. He is the author of many classic writings that have no match in the world of investing. He is the pioneer of security analysis and value investing. His career was marked by working for Newburger, Henderson & Loeb, and later at Graham – Newman Corporation.

Many professional investors hold his books the best for the stock market. Two of many titles that exalt him from the crowd are “Security Analysis,” written in 1934, and “The Intelligent Investor,” published in 1949. Those two books are being considered a must-read, and they have used literature at the universities. Ben Graham is regarded as the most influential analyst of applied portfolio investment. He is known for teaching Warren Buffet and many other famous and successful investors, which demonstrates his ability to pass on the knowledge and not just present the ways and methods of his work.
Ben Graham migrated to New York with his family when he was just a twelve months old baby. When his father died eight years later, his life became preoccupied with financial problems.

He got a job as a messenger at a Wall Street company, “Newburger, Henderson & Loeb,” after graduating from Columbia University in 1914. In just 6 years, he became a partner in the company. After 6 years, he founded a company together with Jerome Newman. His work until his retirement was teaching at Columbia University about finance. Ben Graham went bankrupted during the Great Depression, but he successfully revived his financial status very soon after that. Ben Graham explains his investing style in his book “The Intelligent Investor,” but in short, the basics of his investing methods are that an investment needs to be bought for less of its actual value. “Margin of safety” is the phrase that he uses to describe how an investor should find what to invest in. That means that an investor should find a company whose value is temporarily low but that the company has got a bright future. So the “Margin of safety” is the difference between the real value of a company and the price (lower than real value) that the company is to be bought for.

How does benjamin graham value stocks?

The price in comparison to the real value is – the better. He was a firm believer that a stock’s market price is never the same as the real value. He explained that Mr. Market – as he called it – will always have the value of the stock prices changing, and how that is an opportunity for wise investors to buy something for a lower price than its real value and sell it when the price gets a greater value. He pointed out how following the crowd needs to be avoided, and the lower-priced stocks need to be searched for.

Benjamin Graham Quotes

If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.

Finance has a fascination for many bright young people with limited means. They would like to be both intelligent and enterprising in the placement of their savings, even though investment income is much less important to them than their salaries. This attitude is all to the good. There is a great advantage for the young capitalist to begin his financial education and experience early. If he is going to operate as an aggressive investor he is certain to make some mistakes and to take some losses. Youth can stand these disappointments and profit by them. We urge the beginner in security buying not to waste his efforts and his money in trying to beat the market. Let him study security values and initially test out his judgment on price versus value with the smallest possible sums.

Basically, price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal. At other times he will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.

Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ. You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.

The underlying principles of sound investment should not alter from decade to decade, but the application of these principles must be adapted to significant changes in the financial mechanisms and climate.

Books :

Security Analysis, ISBN 978-0-07-159253-6
The Intelligent Investor
Storage and Stability: A Modern Ever-normal Granary, New York: McGraw Hill. 1937 ISBN 0-07-024774-9[30]
The Interpretation of Financial Statements
World Commodities and World Currency, New York & London, McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1944 ISBN 0-07-024806-0
Benjamin Graham, The Memoirs of the Dean of Wall Street (1996) ISBN 978-0-07-024269-2

An interesting fact from Ben Graham Wikipedia page :

Graham’s most famous student is Warren Buffett. According to Buffett, Graham said that he wished every day to do something foolish, something creative, and something generous. Buffett said that Graham excelled most at the last.Some of Graham’s most famous disciples, who have drawn on the works of several Columbia Business School alumni, many of whom were direct disciples of Benjamin Graham himself, include famous Value Investors such as Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Philip Fischer, Walter Schloss, Peter Lynch, John Templeton, Mohnish Pabrai, Amit Ayare, Whitney Tilson, Prem Watsa, Lauren Templeton, Jerome Chazen and many more.

Michael H. Steinhardt
Michael Steinhardt is a New York-born investor who holds the Wall Street’s record, with his partners, of 24% compound annual returns, which is more than twice than S&P 500 for more than 28 years. He deals well with different sorts of trades, long and short options, bonds, stocks, and currencies, and he had proved himself as a versatile investor.
He actually started showing his talents in economics before he was 20. He was born in 1941, and he finished high school at the age of 16 to graduate at the age of 19; he stormed through the Wharton School of Finance.
His career started at the Wall Street, where he worked at Calvin Bullock and Load Rhoades& Co mutual fund for several years. He worked as a researcher and analyst for seven years. He conjoined Howard Berkowitz and Jerrold Fine and started their own business under a New York-based company that they named Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz&Co. Steinhardt was the head of the group under whose leadership the company blossomed. But after Fine and Berkowitz left the company, it was renamed Steinhardt Partners.
After a loss in 1994, he gave it a try for another year, which was a success as his fund managed to gain 21% in 1995. That was the last year of his life as an investor.
After retiring from investing, he turned to humanitarian work. He worked at multiple universities as a board member.
Even though he was an investor who was usually investing long-term, on many occasions, he often invested short-term, but he was always backed up by a team of his analysts in such cases. He needed a team of analysts because with investing short-term, he was actually taking a risk because it was not the field of his expertise. His motto said that if you want to take risks and invest, invest big and reward yourself big. He thought that following intuition should not be ignored.

Michael Steinhardt Quotes :

Speculative joy, the joy derived from being right and being rewarded, may well be similar to the rush felt by a winning gambler.

Art is a form of asset. Hedge-fund managers who have made money fast should diversify into other areas.

Books about Michael Steinhardt :
Schwager, Jack D. (1993). Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders. 27 pages: Collins; Reissue edition. ISBN 0-88730-610-1.
Steinhardt, Michael (2001). No Bull: My Life In and Out of Markets. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-66046-9.

Jesse Lauriston Livermore
Jesse L. Livermore was one of the pioneers in stock trade speculations. He was born in South Acton, Massachusetts, in 1877, and he went away from this world by taking his own life in 1940, at the age of 63.

He started at early age because he didn’t want to work on his family farm. Rather he thought to pursuit wealth other ways. Therefore he moved to Boston and got a job in Paine Webber Company. He started trading for himself when he was just fifteen. That way he had earned more than a thousand USD, which is equal between today’s 300,000.00 dollars, or even a million in terms of economic power value.
He started betting against what is known as a “bucket shop”. His success in that business made him become unwanted in Boston, so when all the shops banned him, he moved to New York – closer to Wall Street. His ability to manage in speculative trading turned him to a really successful trader, but his way of doing business saw him going up and down too many times. He wanted to earn money fast, and he wasn’t looking to invest in long-term business. He gained and lost millions of dollars and such life lead him to commit suicide.

Since he had no education in stock trading, as he entered the stock market at his early age, he learned all by himself and from his own mistakes, which brought some fast earnings, even faster loosing, many pressure and a suicide. He evolved into somebody still regarded as a successful trader, even though he did many wrong moves, but the trading style that was his mark is still present in today’s stock market. His principal was that not only individual stock is what is worth, but it is the whole market that should be analyzed. He saw that analyzing the direction of the entire market brings more success than focusing on single stock, without regarding the direction of the whole market.

His definition of a successful stock trader is that such a trader does research about the market, the economy and the company, and who doesn’t focus on the short-term. A good investor always does his own research and doesn’t give much credit to the insider information. He knew that speculations might mislead sometimes, and like every famous investor with a huge success, Livermore knew that your own estimation must be made upon thorough research.
His suicide preceded by many mistakes and misjudgments marked his life more than his success did, but his contribution to the stock market and the entire business can’t be foreseen.

Favorited book :
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Reference: Jesse Livermore wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lauriston_Livermore

Bill Miller was born in Laurinburg, North Carolina, in 1950. He has been in the investing business since 1972, after graduating economics from the Washington & Lee University. His first job was at the J.E. Baker Co, where he worked as a treasurer. After ten years at that position, he got a job at Legg Mason, and he became the company’s head chairman and investor.
He became famous when under his leadership Legg Mason Value Trust noted one of the greatest successes in mutual fund history. He got the longest successful investments ever, which beat the S&P Index for fifteen years in a row. In that time, from 1991-2006, Miller’s fund made the growth of more than 19 billion dollars. He now works as ahead of the board of investors of the Santa Fe Institute.

Bill Miller Santa Fe Institute Bullish Case:

Bill Miller trading style
His investing method brought him billions, and the main part of his principles that brought success to other investors is patience. Like every successful and smart investor, Bill Miller is a patient and thorough researcher. His boost was not instant, but his earnings are tremendous. Decades of studying and decades of investing were needed for him to be at the level he is now. He doesn’t discard any stock, as he knows that there can always be a way to trade it at a discount to its intrinsic worth for any stock.
Watch the video where Bill Miller explains his trading style:

He suggests doing a thorough analysis and developing a security strategy when investing for those who want to learn from him. He reminds us that assumptions based on something’s looks or the stock’s low price are wrong and misleading. Analysis of a stock that looks too expensive or cheap is essential to find its real value. Since most of the stocks that look expensive actually are expensive, it is necessary to analyze all to find those that are mispriced, and there comes the benefit. Also, his style includes learning from the mistakes other investors make. Most mistakes are always because they are short-term investments, so he points out how research and analysis are important to find a good long-term investment.