John Templeton

Maximum pessimism, global value pioneer, contrarian country bets

Sir John Marks Templeton was an American-born British investor, banker, fund manager, and philanthropist. In 1954, he entered the mutual fund market and created the Templeton Growth Fund, which averaged growth over 15% per year for 38 years. A pioneer of emerging market investing in the 1960s, Money magazine named him "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century" in 1999.