The World's Greatest Investors

IN A MARKET CLIMATE like this, the title "World's Greatest Investor" can sound like faint praise — it's like getting the top grade in your remedial English class or being the best player on the Cincinnati Bengals. Sure, with the Dow and the S&P 500 down at least 12 percent since October, just breaking even is an accomplishment, but performance like that doesn't typically inspire anyone to throw the word "great" around.

But we're going to throw it around anyway, in honor of a rather elite cadre of five money managers. Experienced, superbright and at times a little lucky, their track records in choppy markets make them diamonds in the rough. With one exception — good to see you again, Uncle Warren — they aren't household names or even the best known in their field. But they have a few important qualities in common. They're the money-management equivalents of free agents, with the independence to buy whatever asset seems right for the times rather than hewing to some rigid investing style. "The fastest way to perdition is to hug benchmarks," notes Loomis Sayles bond guru Dan Fuss. One of our investors doesn't even have a conventional benchmark to hug: Jane Mendillo, the new manager of Harvard's endowment fund, works in a world where "alternative" investments like arbitrage and timberland have been the route to stellar returns.

At a time when U.S. stocks and bonds are struggling, our World's Greatest have the latitude to take their money overseas, and this year they're relying on that freedom — David Winters of the Wintergreen Fund, for example, has 70 percent of his invested assets parked abroad. (We've also spotlighted a top-performing international-only stock picker, Amit Wadhwaney of Third Avenue Funds.) And lest this crowd sound too esoteric, they share another quality that any avid investor can appreciate: They've made a religion out of buying cheap. Ultimately, it's a group with five very distinct approaches to building wealth — some unfamiliar, all great.