Sir John Marks Templeton (29 November 1912 – 8 July 2008)[1] was an American-born British investor, banker, fund manager, and philanthropist.
[3] A pioneer of emerging market investing in the 1960s,[4] Money magazine named him "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century" in 1999.
[18] From the late 1930s Templeton and his colleagues developed sophisticated quantitative finance methods that anticipated by decades common features such as the Shiller P/E, rebalancing and Tobin's q.
[4] However, his stock-selection strategies could be eclectic and often defied easy categorization other than avoiding stocks he considered expensive, defined as an estimated five-year forward price to earnings ratio higher than about 12-14.
[18] Templeton focused on buying stocks he calculated were substantially undervalued, holding them until selling when their price rose to fair market value.
However, Templeton did not buy stocks merely because they were undervalued but also took care investing in companies he determined were profitable, well-managed and with good long-term potential.
By emphasizing overlooked or unpopular stocks Templeton was in many ways a contrarian and became known for his "avoiding the herd" and "buy when there's blood in the streets" philosophy to take advantage of market turmoil.
[20] His time at Oxford started an interest in global investing, which was uncommon in the United States but more popular in the UK due to the widespread British Empire.
Templeton was one of the earliest American investors to devote substantial focus to investment opportunities in then-overlooked foreign markets such as Asia and Eastern Europe.
[18] Typical of value-oriented investors, Templeton often had disappointing results during bull markets due to his avoidance of hot stocks of the moment.
[18] In 2005, he wrote a brief memorandum predicting that within five years there would be financial chaos in the world, anticipating a collapse of the housing market and decline in yields on government-issued bonds to near zero.
Initially privately circulated to family and a small number of Franklin-Templeton management, the memo was eventually made public in 2010.
A friend jokingly described Templeton as Calvinist in his approach to wealth: "He believes it's okay to make money so long as you don't enjoy it.
Templeton was inducted into the Junior Achievement US Business Hall of Fame in 1996, and in 2003 awarded the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership.
However, Templeton eschewed dogma and declared relatively little was known about the divine through scripture, espousing what he called a "humble approach" to theology and remaining open to the benefits and values of other faiths.
"[29] Similarly, one of the major goals of the John Templeton Foundation is to proliferate the monetary support of spiritual discoveries.