Investors with Clearly Different Investment Philosophies

Speculation and price action. Livermore traded on market movements rather than company value, watching prices and volume, buying strength, cutting losses fast and making very large short bets, famously before the crashes of 1907 and 1929. The thinly disguised account of his methods, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, is still read by traders. His approach also bankrupted him several times, and he took his own life in 1940.

Value investing. Graham, a Columbia lecturer, argued after losing heavily in 1929 to 1932 that a share is part of a business, that market prices swing with mood, and that an investor should buy only with a margin of safety below a cautious estimate of worth. Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor set this out. His strictly statistical bargains, such as companies trading below their net cash, became scarce as markets grew more efficient.

Growth investing. Fisher, a California fund manager, took the opposite view to Graham: buy a few outstanding, growing companies and hold them for decades, even at prices that look high. His 1958 book Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits recommended scuttlebutt, interviewing customers, suppliers and competitors to judge management. He held Motorola for decades. The method needs rare judgement and patience, and is easy to confuse with simply paying too much.

Global contrarian investing. Templeton bought a basket of more than 100 US shares at a dollar or less each in 1939, when war fears had crushed prices, and later looked worldwide for markets at the point of maximum pessimism, investing in Japan long before most Americans. His funds spread international investing to ordinary savers. The approach requires buying what everyone else is selling, which is psychologically harder than it sounds.

Quality at a fair price. Buffett began as Graham's student, buying cheap statistical bargains, then shifted, partly under Charlie Munger's influence, to buying excellent businesses with durable advantages and holding them indefinitely, through Berkshire Hathaway. Insurance float gave him permanent capital most fund managers lack, which is one reason his record is hard to copy. Greg Abel succeeded him as chief executive in January 2026.

Mental models and patience. Munger, Buffett's partner at Berkshire, argued that good investing means drawing on a latticework of ideas from psychology, economics and other fields, avoiding stupidity rather than seeking brilliance, and doing very little. He favoured a handful of concentrated holdings, including a long stake in China's BYD. His approach is clearer as a way of thinking than as a repeatable method. He died in 2023.

Indexing. Bogle founded Vanguard in 1975 and launched the first index fund for ordinary investors the next year, built on the argument that, after fees, most active managers trail the market, so the best bet is to own it all cheaply. Vanguard is owned by its funds, which keeps costs down. The idea, mocked at first, now holds a large share of all fund money, raising its own questions about concentrated voting power.

Venture capital. Rock helped the engineers who left Shockley Semiconductor find backing for Fairchild in 1957, then funded Intel and Apple, and is credited with popularising the term venture capitalist. His philosophy was to back people rather than plans and to accept that most bets fail while a few return many times over. That power-law logic now shapes technology funding, for better and worse.

Mathematical edges. Thorp, a mathematics professor, first proved that blackjack could be beaten by card counting, then applied the same thinking to markets, running Princeton Newport Partners from 1969 on hedged trades in convertible bonds and warrants priced by his own formulas. He used the Kelly criterion to size bets. His approach anticipated quantitative hedge funds, and he was an early sceptic of Bernard Madoff's returns.

Reflexivity and macro bets. Soros argues that markets do not simply reflect reality but change it, as rising prices attract buyers who drive prices higher, until the trend breaks. His Quantum Fund made large bets on currencies and markets, most famously against the pound in 1992, earning the label of the man who broke the Bank of England. Critics see his trading as an example of concentrated financial power over national economies.

Activism. Icahn's approach is to buy a large stake in a company he thinks is badly run, then push publicly for board seats, buybacks, break-ups or a sale, as at TWA, RJR Nabisco, Apple and many others. Supporters say activists discipline complacent managers; critics say they favour quick gains over long-term investment. His own listed vehicle, Icahn Enterprises, came under pressure in 2023 after a short seller questioned its finances.

Know what you own. Lynch ran Fidelity's Magellan fund from 1977 to 1990 and encouraged ordinary investors to start with companies they understood from daily life, then do the research, as he did with products such as L'eggs tights and Dunkin' Donuts. In practice he held well over a thousand stocks and worked relentlessly, so the friendly slogan understates the effort. He stepped down at 46 to spend more time with his family.

Quantitative trading. Simons, a prize-winning mathematician and former code-breaker, founded Renaissance Technologies and hired scientists rather than financiers to find small, short-lived statistical patterns in market data. Its Medallion fund, closed to outsiders and run mainly for employees, produced extraordinary returns. The method is secret, relies on huge data and computing, and offers little an individual can copy. He died in 2024.

The endowment model. Swensen ran Yale's endowment from 1985 until his death in 2021 and moved it away from shares and bonds towards private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and property, betting that a long-lived institution could profit from investments others found too illiquid. Many universities copied it with mixed results. In his book for individuals he advised the opposite: low-cost index funds.

Risk parity and macro principles. Dalio founded Bridgewater in 1975 and built its All Weather approach, which balances a portfolio by risk rather than by money, so bonds, shares, commodities and inflation-linked assets each carry a similar share of the swings. He also codified a culture of radical transparency in his book Principles. Critics have questioned how well that culture worked in practice, and risk parity suffered when bonds and shares fell together in 2022.

Cycles and distressed debt. Marks co-founded Oaktree Capital in 1995 to buy the debt of troubled companies, and is best known for memos to clients arguing that investors cannot predict the economy but can judge where the market is in its cycle and how much risk others are taking. His emphasis on avoiding losers rather than picking winners suits credit markets in particular. He is co-chairman of Oaktree.

Buy good companies and do nothing. Smith, a former City analyst sacked for a book exposing accounting tricks, founded Fundsmith in 2010 with a three-part rule: buy good companies, do not overpay, do nothing. The fund holds a small number of high-return consumer and technology businesses for years and trades very little. It became one of Britain's best-known funds, though it has trailed the global market in recent years.

Deep contrarian research. Burry, a former doctor who taught himself investing, read the details of mortgage bonds and in 2005 bought insurance against them through Scion Capital, a trade made famous by The Big Short. His method is solitary, document-heavy research against consensus, held through long periods of looking wrong. He deregistered Scion in 2025 and now manages his own money.

Disruptive innovation. Wood founded ARK Invest in 2014 to buy companies she believes will be transformed by technologies such as genomics, robotics, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence, publishing her research openly and holding concentrated, high-conviction positions through exchange-traded funds. ARK's flagship fund surged in 2020 and then fell steeply, making it a case study in the volatility of thematic growth investing. She leads ARK.