10 Great Investors and What we can learn from them (6 mins read)

The best way to grow our money passively and organically is to do ‘Investments’. It is obvious that only an expert on subject matter can teach us that subject thoroughly. And, in the realm of Investing, here the expert is an Investor. And, what could be the best if you get tips to invest in the share market from the great investors of all time.

After a lot of research, WealthDrift brings the top 10 Investors of all time and their best investment strategies to follow for successful investments. Let’s start –

1. Benjamin Graham (1894 – 1976)

Benjamin Graham is widely known as the Father of Value Investing. He was born in England to a Jewish family. Though he was born in a poor family, however by age of 25, he was earning $500,000 annually. He also authored two famous books on investing, ‘Security Analysis’ and ‘The Intelligent Investor’.

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

Benjamin Graham

Investment Tips –

1. An investor should focus on fundamental analysis and seek companies with strong financials. E.g. company with little debt, ample cash flow, and strong balance sheets.
2. One should make the investment if investments are worth substantially more than their cost. This concept is known as the ‘Margin of Safety’.
3. One should do research necessarily and should not depend upon Mr. Market as it often irrational and greed and fear run his emotions.
4. Use market volatility to earn profits. Graham used to buy stocks of a strong company that did not perform well and used to sell them when holdings were overvalued.

2. Warren Buffett (1930 – Present)

Literally, everyone in the world knows his name. He is widely viewed as one of the greatest investors of all time in history and indeed the wealthiest investor. His net worth estimates at $84.6 billion. Warren Buffett is also referred to as “Oracle of Omaha”, who went from a newspaper delivery boy to the Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a multinational conglomerate holding company.

Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing.

Warren Buffett

Investment Tips –

1. Invest with a long-term approach, buy and hold it for a long period of time.
2. One should always buy undervalued stocks and remember cash is the king.
3. Before investing, ensure these points – i) the Company should have good and competent management; ii) It must have good future prospects; iii) Its business should be understandable, stable, and undervalued.

You can also read our article on the Top 10 share market investment tips from Warren Buffett. Click here to read

3. Carl Icahn (1936 – Present)

Carl Icahn is an American businessman and one of Wall Street’s most successful investors. His estimated net worth is $17.4 Billion and he is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a diversified conglomerate holding company.

He has been an options trader, a corporate raider, a risk arbitrager, and an activist investor at various times of his life. He has also beaten the track record set by Mr. Buffett when he averaged more than 30% annualized returns since 1968 as compared to 20% of Berkshire’s returns since 1965.

I look at companies as businesses, while Wall Street analysts look for quarterly earnings performance. I buy assets and potential productivity. Wall Street buys earnings, so they miss a lot of things that I see in certain situations.

Carl Icahn

Investment Tips –

1. Carl suggests us to use our detailed research based on facts from trusted sources and advice to understand the business thoroughly whose stock we consider buying.
2. Be an activist trader i.e. own enough stock of a company that you can take and influence their management decisions. However, this tip is not for small investors.
3. Always invest in assets that have good potential for productivity and understand pricing power.
4. Like Warren Buffett, he also emphasizes investing in undervalued stocks.

4. Peter Lynch (1944-Present)

Peter Lynch is an American investor, who is widely famous for beating the S&P 500 Index for 11 of the 13 years (1977 to 1990) when he was the manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments.

He is considered to be the greatest mutual fund manager in history and often described as a chameleon, as he adapted himself according to the investment style that worked at the time. He also popularized the PEG ratio.

PEG ratio – Price to Earnings ratio divided by earnings growth of a company. Lower PEG indicates that a company is more undervalued than others.

Average investors can become experts in their own field and can pick winning stocks as effectively as Wall Street professionals by doing just a little research.

Peter Lynch

Investment Tips –

1. Always pick up stocks that you understand and scrutinize its core business, this way you would analyze a company’s standings in a better way.
2. Do not worry about the short-term stock fluctuations and don’t make your investment decision based on the news media headlines.
3.  Always focus on long-term investing i.e. pick and hold investments for a long time for a good return.
4. Have in-depth research into the financial and other aspects of a company before investing in it irrespective of how attractive that company looks on the outside.

5. Sir John Templeton (1912-2008)

Sir John Templeton was an American-born British investor and fund manager. Money magazine, in 1999, called him the greatest global stock of the century. He was the pioneer of mutual funds and created the famous Templeton Growth Fund. He believed in a contrarian investing strategy, in which an investor would buy stocks instead of selling them when the market is going downwards and vice versa.

Don’t panic. The time to sell is before the crash, not after.

Sir John Templeton

Investment Tips –

1. Keep extra cash with you and buy when the market is low.
2. Remember the stock market is not a casino wherein you gamble in order to earn easy and quick money. Therefore, invest in the long-term, do not trade or speculate.
3. Do not panic when you made some mistake in investing and further, learn from it for your better future.
4. Invest after considering maximum total return i.e. 10% return per year will not be the actual return of an investment, inflation and taxes shall also be taken into account.

6. Prince Al Waleed bin Talal (1955-Present)

Al Waleed bin Talal is an investor from Saudi Arabia, also nicknamed “Warren Buffett” of Saudi Arabia. He founded the Kingdom Holding Company and later in the early 1990s, became Citigroup bank’s largest shareholder. He was also listed in Time Magazine’s Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2008. His net worth estimates at $16.3 Billion.

We’re getting hurt, but I’m a long-term investor.

Prince Al Waleed bin Talal

Investment Tips –

1. Like the many best investors in the world, focus on buying undervalued stocks for good returns.
2. Seeks for companies with a global presence or the potential to become one with their promising high-growth business.
3. Do not believe in the Exit philosophy of investing where you exit the company completely, says Prince Talal.
4. Diversify your investment portfolio both geography and industry-wise.

7. Philip Fisher (1907-2004)

Philip Fisher was a widely acclaimed investor in the world. He was born in an American family. He authored a famous book known as “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits.”

If you want to see a classic example of long-term investing look at Philip Fisher. He bought Motorola shares in 1955 and he continued to own those shares until his death in 2004.

As a stock rises to, say, 50 or 60 or 70, the urge to sell and take a profit now that the stock is high becomes irresistible to many people. Giving in to this urge can be very costly. This is because the genuinely worthwhile profits in stock investing have come from holding the surprisingly large number of stocks that have gone up many times from their original cost.

Philip Fisher

Investment Tips –

1. Buy high-quality growth stocks of companies with strong management teams and growth prospects.
2. Invest in young companies as they offer the high possibility of good gain. Gain can go up to several thousand percentages in a decade.
3. You don’t need to go and buy a lot of good investments instead go for few outstanding ones.

8. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (1960 – Present)

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is an Indian investor whose current net worth is $3.3 Billion (48^th richest person in India). He is famously known as “Warren Buffett of India” and also as the Investor with a Midas touch. He is a firm believer in investing strategy of ‘Buy and hold’ and manages his portfolio in his asset management firm, Rare Enterprises.

Invest in a business not a company.

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala

Investment Tips –

1. Do not go for emotional investments, here emotional investments mean that when an investor sells his holdings during a recession and buys when the market is doing very well reacting to his emotions. He asks to avoid emotional investments.
2. He says that one should never depend on the historical data of investment and asks us to conduct proper research before investing.
3. Do not copy investing by watching others, as there might be a possibility wherein others can handle the losses and you cannot.

He is the only Indian who made to our list of the great investors of all time and you can follow his tips to invest in share market to be successful in large economies.

9. John (Jack) Bogle (1929 – 2019)

Bogle was an American investor who founded the Vanguard Group (A Mutual Fund Company) in 1975. He is famously known for his creation of the world’s first index fund. He also authored a famous book named ‘The Little Book of Common Sense Investing’.

If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.

John Bogle

Investment Tips –

1. Don’t buy funds basis on past performance only, as it could be the stupidest thing an investor can do.
2. Your investment portfolio must be diversified broadly as no one knows how the stock market behaves tomorrow.
3. According to him, you will surely get success in investing if you’ll own the entire stock market through an index fund for many years, without panicking and selling.
4. His allocation formula = (Your age – 10) that means if your 25, then (25-10) = 15, here 15% of your investment in bonds and 85% in stocks.

10. George Soros (1930 – Present)

George Soros is a Hungarian-born American billionaire Investor who believes strongly in philanthropy and also popularly known as the man who broke the Bank of England. He is the only one on the list of the great investors of all time who made $1 Billion in a single day and his investment tips are based more on trading rather than investing.

He founded an investment management firm named, Soros Fund Management, which eventually evolved into the well-known Quantum Fund. A famous book named “The Alchemy of Finance” is also written by him.

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux, and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

George Soros

Investment Tips –

1. He says that an Investor should ‘Look forward’ which means that the investor should look at the company’s future earnings (18 to 24 months from now).
2. Advises us to know where we have gone wrong in investing. Because the number of errors you will make the greater will be your skill for long-term trading.
3. Says that good investing is boring, check whether you’re getting fun or getting bored while doing investing.

Well, readers, now you know the tips to invest in stock market from the great investors of all time. It is the time you apply these tips into action.

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