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The investor library
Twenty-three investors worth the time, each with the record, how the method actually evolved, the signature trades told as mechanism rather than legend — and, written hardest on the ones most admired, the other side of the record.
Twenty-three careers, a hundred and sixty years
Read one at a time, the profiles are separate. Laid over the same span the overlaps do the work: Graham is ruined in 1929 while Fisher is a year into business and losing money being right about the same crash. Munger is down by half across 1973–74 while Schloss is buying and Bogle is being fired. Hover any dot.
paid off a decision a loss, or a ruin inside the bar walked away the life ◆ a book shaded columns are the crashes — hover any mark
The pattern nobody sees reading them one at a time is how many chose to stop: Lynch at forty-six, Greenblatt returning outside capital after ten years, Munger closing his partnership the year after it recovered, Klarman handing back billions, Sleep winding up at the height of his reputation.
How far to an idea
Not where they lived — that is a scatter of American cities and says nothing. Each tile is the same window on the same projection, so the circles compare directly: how far this person had to go to find something to buy. Thirty-five countries for Templeton. A borrowed room for Schloss.
The circle is how far they went to find an idea — same scale on every tile: a deska drive a countrythe world
Ordered by when each career started, and the order is the finding. Reach turns out to have almost nothing to do with era: Templeton was global in 1937, Schloss never left a borrowed room and ran until 2002, and Sleep went worldwide in 2001 while Simons — starting the same decade — never left a building. Distance to an idea is a choice, not a period. The four sizes are a rank rather than a measured distance.
What the twenty-three have in common
Reading them together turns up patterns no single profile shows, and none of them is the pattern the genre usually sells.
8 of 23
walked away while winning
Lynch retired at forty-six. Greenblatt returned outside capital after ten years at roughly 50% a year. Munger closed his partnership the year after it recovered, Klarman handed back $4bn, Sleep wound up at the height of his reputation, Druckenmiller quit because a thirty-year unbeaten record had become unbearable, Schloss stopped when the screen returned nothing, and Templeton sold the funds outright.
8 of 23
were ruined, fired or nearly finished first
Graham lost about 70% and worked for years without pay. Bogle was fired. Munger fell by more than half across two years. Simons nearly shut Medallion. Fisher lost money in 1929 being right about it. Smith was sacked for refusing to withdraw his own book. Ackman lost about half the fund across 2015-18 and watched investors leave. Miller fell about 72% in 2008 and saw $16.5bn become under $1bn.
5 of 23
made their name on the sell, not the buy
Templeton left Japan above thirty times earnings after buying at four; Marks raised the money in 2007 rather than spending it in 2008; Klarman held cash for years; Schloss shut the fund; Greenblatt gave the method away. The entry is what gets written about. The exit is where the record was decided.
4 of 23
had no meaningful access at all
Scheiber invested a civil servant's savings from a rented room. Weiss worked from a kitchen table. Schloss used Value Line in a borrowed office. Graham found his best trade in a public filing nobody had opened.
3 of 23
left no verifiable record
Fisher never published returns. Green predates disclosure entirely. Weiss ran a model portfolio rather than money. Reputation and record are different things, and the library marks which is which.
4 of 23
were undone by their own central idea
Druckenmiller, who says size decides everything, lost about $3bn on size — and says he knew better and did it anyway. Graham's largest success broke the diversification rule his own books require. Ackman's method needs the thesis said out loud, and saying it out loud is what recruited the coalition that beat him on Herbalife. And Miller's rule -- lowest average cost wins -- is exactly what he followed into Bear Stearns, Countrywide and AIG.
The ones who were not allowed a record
A note on who is missing
Four of the twenty-three are women, and three of those four could not get the job. Geraldine Weiss took a finance degree in 1945 and was offered secretarial work for twenty years, then signed her own newsletter G. Weiss for eleven years so that it would be read. Anne Scheiber audited at the IRS for twenty-three years without a promotion and invested alone from a rented room. Hetty Green was written up as a witch.
The entry standard for this library is a long, documented record of managing money — and that standard is itself downstream of who was permitted to manage it. A list built on records will under-count women for as long as the records were controlled by people who would not hire them. Naming that is more honest than quietly widening the criterion for some names and not others.
So the women whose contribution was not a track record belong here by name rather than by profile:
- Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin opened the first brokerage on Wall Street run by women, in 1870, backed by Cornelius Vanderbilt.
- Isabel Benham became the first woman partner in a Wall Street bond house and the leading railroad analyst of her generation — publishing, like Weiss, under initials.
- Muriel Siebert bought the first New York Stock Exchange seat held by a woman in 1967, after nine of the ten men she approached refused to sponsor her.
- Abby Joseph Cohen was the most listened-to strategist of the 1990s, and among the few to say out loud in 2000 that the market had gone.
- Brooksley Born warned in 1998, as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that unregulated over-the-counter derivatives were a systemic risk. She was overruled by the most senior economic officials in the country, and was right.
- Sheila Bair ran the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation through 2008 and argued, largely alone among the principals, that the banks being rescued should bear more of the cost.
Not a profile each, because this library measures records and theirs are not that shape. Named because a list that silently omitted them would be reporting the exclusion as though it were a finding about ability.
The twenty-three
Each carries one open question about that investor — the thing worth arguing about, rather than a verdict. One entry is marked case study: Cathie Wood is here because she is the sharpest living example of a question this library keeps running into — what a fund’s return is worth if virtually nobody earned it — and not because the record stands beside the rest.
- Hetty Greenfrom 1865~6-7% a year ○Countercyclical liquidityHow much of the miser legend is the record, and how much is what was written about her?
- Benjamin Grahamfrom 1914~20% a year ○Deep valueHis best decision broke his own rules — so which is the lesson?
- Philip Fisherfrom 1928Qualitative growthWhat is left of scuttlebutt once everyone hears the same call?
- Walter Schlossfrom 193415.3% a year ✓Statistical valueThe purest test of whether the method works without judgement.
- John Templetonfrom 1937~15% a year ✓Global contrarianWas the edge temperament, or access?
- Anne Scheiberfrom 1944~17% a year ○Buy, and never sellThe only record here an ordinary person could have repeated.
- John Boglefrom 1951IndexingArithmetic, not opinion — so why did it take forty years to win?
- Warren Buffettfrom 195619.8% a year ✓Quality compoundingA method, or a machine?
- Charlie Mungerfrom 1962~19.8% a year ✓Concentrated qualityA method, or an editor's veto?
- Geraldine Weissfrom 1966low teens a year ○Dividend-yield valueIs an anchor that only works on a narrow set of companies a method, or a filter?
- Peter Lynchfrom 1969~29% a year ✓Bottom-up growthWhy did Magellan's investors do so much worse than Magellan?
- George Sorosfrom 1969~30% a year ○Reflexive macroIs reflexivity a theory, or a description written afterwards?
- Stanley Druckenmillerfrom 1977~30% a year ○Macro, at sizeIs “size, not accuracy” advice anyone can take?
- Howard Marksfrom 197819-23% a year ○Distressed creditIs “you can't predict, you can prepare” falsifiable?
- Jim Simonsfrom 197866% a year ✓Systematic quantThe best record ever recorded — and the least useful.
- Bill Millerfrom 1981Value by cash flowWas the fifteen-year streak skill, or an artefact of the calendar?
- Seth Klarmanfrom 198215-20% a year ○Absolute-return valueIs holding cash a strategy, or an abdication?
- Joel Greenblattfrom 1985~50% a year ✓Special situationsHe had a fifty-per-cent method, and then he published it.
- David Swensenfrom 198513.7% a year ✓Endowment allocationThe model was copied everywhere and the results were not — so what was the edge?
- Bill Ackmanfrom 1992~15% a year ✓Activist concentrationHis method requires saying it out loud — does that change whether it is right?
- Nick Sleepfrom 200120.8% a year ✓Scale economics sharedThe idea, or the temperament to hold three positions?
- Terry Smithfrom 2010~15% a year ✓Quality, and nothing elseThree instructions — and which of them is actually hard?
- Cathie Woodfrom 2014Case studyThematic growthWhat is a fund's return worth if virtually nobody earned it?
Profiles of investors, not views on any security, and not personal advice. Figures are marked ✓ where they are documented and ○ where they rest on secondary or private accounts — investing biography is heavily mythologised and the well-known numbers drift with each retelling. Capital is at risk.
Corrections and right of reply. Where a criticism is made of a named person it is stated as a specific measure over a stated period, attributed to its source, and separated from opinion. Assessments are opinion, honestly held, on facts believed accurate at the date shown. If anyone profiled here — or anyone acting for them — believes a fact is wrong, it will be corrected promptly and visibly, and a reply will be published alongside it on request.