How Sir John Templeton Became A Billionaire!

They say there’s nothing new under the sun. Including the Own The World strategy that we push so hard in the Elite Investor Club. Today I want to tell you about the first man to adopt this approach. And it made him a billionaire…
One of the many biases we tend to have as investors is to put too great an emphasis onto our home market. It’s actively encouraged by financial advisers, mainly because their training focuses on too narrow a range of markets and financial instruments. Hence if you look closely at your pension fund or the portfolio your IFA put together for you it may be that fifty per cent or more is invested across UK equity funds.
One of the earliest pioneers of the Own The World approach that we espouse in the Elite Investor Club was the late, great Sir John Templeton. It started during the war when he borrowed ten thousand dollars to set up his portfolio. Borrowing money to invest? Not the most prudent approach you might think. He also went against conventional wisdom by investing across a hundred different companies, all with burned-out records and their shares in the less than a dollar bargain basement.
Templeton figured that the war would turn these sows ears into silk purses, and he was right. His portfolio was up four hundred per cent by the end of the war, enough to get him started as a professional fund manager. He was so successful that he retired early to the Bahamas, running just one hobby fund, the Templeton Growth Fund. He multiplied its value twenty fold in as many years, pioneering new markets like Japan as early as the nineteen sixties.
Let’s have a look at some of Sir John Templeton’s investment tenets that made him a billionaire. First, and most important from my perspective, search worldwide for companies and markets that will give significant returns. Keep an open mind, rather than following the fashionable prejudices of today’s so called experts.
Don’t follow the crowd and avoid the most popular shares. Do you really think you know something about Apple or Facebook that the market has not already priced in to the stock? Everything changes, so what was true about a company five years ago will almost certainly not be true today. Be on the look out for bargains and companies that offer great value. These can often be found when everyone else is at their most pessimistic. Russian stocks in late twenty fourteen, for example.
Look for real returns above and beyond inflation. And he meant real inflation, not the official Alice in Wonderland version. And remember that no one knows everything so don’t be fooled by self anointed stock market experts. Dominic Frisby went further when I interviewed him recently – he said no one knows anything. Harsh, but probably fair!
His global outlook made Sir John Templeton unique in his day. At the time of his death in two thousand and eight the worldwide market was well on the way to becoming accessible to all of us through exchange traded funds or ETFS. With low fees and the ability to track specific geographic or vertical markets, we really do have the world at our fingertips. We don’t need Templeton’s legendary stock picking skills to benefit from growth wherever it happens. We just need to set the system up, save regularly and let time and compounding do the rest.
If you think there’s a smarter way to wealth, be very careful out there.

[jonascastejon]

You forgot to mention that in 2008 the worldwide market was well underway to a great financial crisis also. After that, it became cheap, surely.

[La_sagne]

what do you mean with real inflation? (not alice in wonderland inflation) what means what/ whats the difference?