Remembering Sir John Templeton

He was the one who used the strategy, buy low and sell high! That is Sir John Templeton, the Founder and former Chairman of Templeton Investments who passed away yesterday at the age of 95.

This was one of Sir John Templeton's 16 rules for investment success, "If you begin your investments with a prayer, you can think more clearly and make fewer mistakes".

When the Second World War began in 1939, he bought shares of 104 penny companies and only four turned out to be worthless after he held each for an average of four years.

JOHN TEMPLETON (1912-2008)

John Templeton, who founded the Templeton Mutual Funds passed away after a prolonged bout of penumonia.

A pioneer in financial investments and philanthropy, he believed that if he hadn't sought new paths, he would have been unable to attain so many goals.
A Knight Bachelor created by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 for his many accomplishments, began his career on Wall Street in 1937.

He entered the US mutual fund industry in 1954 and established the Templeton Growth Fund. To give an account of the success of the fund, each USD 10,000 invested in the Templeton Growth Fund Class A in 1954, with dividends reinvested would have grown to USD 2 million by 1992.

Templeton was known for starting his mutual fund's annual meetings with a prayer. And so, investing took a back seat due to his religious and charitable endeavours, when in 1992, he sold the Templeton Funds to the Franklin Group for USD 440 million.

Franklin Templeton Group today manages over USD 620 billion worldwide.

Taking a less-traveled route in investing, Templeton provided advice on how to invest worldwide when Americans rarely considered foreign investment. While standard stock-buying advice is "buy low, sell high," Templeton took the strategy to an extreme, picking nations, industries, and companies hitting rock-bottom, what he called "points of maximum pessimism." Templeton's progressive ideas on finance, faith, and spirituality made him a distinctive figure in both fields.

by Pooja Meswani, CNBC-TV18

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