John Templeton

In 1939, as World War II erupted in Europe and fear paralyzed financial markets, a young John Templeton did something that seemed insane at the time: he called his broker and instructed him to buy $100 worth of every stock trading under $1 per share on the New York Stock Exchange. That meant buying 104 companies, many of them on the brink of bankruptcy. He funded the entire purchase with a $10,000 loan. His reasoning was simple but brilliant: maximum pessimism creates maximum opportunity, and even among distressed companies, enough would survive and thrive to make the overall bet hugely profitable.

He was spectacularly right. Within four years, 100 of his 104 picks had turned a profit. Only four went to zero. His portfolio quadrupled in value, and the profits launched what would become one of the most successful investment careers of the 20th century. Templeton went on to pioneer global investing, founding the Templeton Growth Fund, which turned $10,000 invested in 1954 into over $2 million by 1992. His WWII trade established the principle that became his trademark: "The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy."