John Templeton facts for kids

Sir John Marks Templeton (born November 29, 1912 – died July 8, 2008) was a very successful investor and a generous giver. He was born in America but later became a British citizen.

In 1954, he started a special type of investment called a mutual fund. It was called the Templeton Growth Fund. This fund grew by more than 15% each year for 38 years! He was also one of the first to invest in new and growing markets around the world. Because of his amazing success, Money magazine called him "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century" in 1999.

Early Life and Education

John Marks Templeton was born in Winchester, Tennessee. He went to Yale University, a famous school in the U.S. To pay for his studies, he won money playing poker and worked odd jobs. He was a very good student and graduated near the top of his class in 1934.

After Yale, he went to Balliol College, Oxford in England as a Rhodes Scholar. This is a special scholarship for talented students. He earned a master's degree in law there. He also learned a lot about investing from Benjamin Graham, who is known as the "father of value investing".

John Templeton's Investment Career

In 1939, during a tough economic time called the Great Depression, John Templeton made a smart move. He bought 100 shares of every company on the NYSE stock exchange that was selling for less than $1 a share. There were 104 such companies, and 34 of them were even bankrupt!

When World War II started, the U.S. economy began to grow quickly. Many of these companies became very successful, and John Templeton made a lot of money from his investments. This clever strategy helped him become very wealthy.

He became a billionaire by being one of the first to invest in many different companies around the world. His Templeton Growth Fund, started in 1954, was one of the first American funds to invest in Japan in the 1960s. He also created funds for specific industries like nuclear energy and electronics. By 1959, his company was managing over $66 million.

In 2006, he was listed among the richest people in The Sunday Times "Rich List".

His Investment Ideas

Money magazine called him "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century" in 1999. John Templeton believed his success came from staying positive and disciplined. He didn't try to guess how stock prices would move. Instead, he focused on how much a company was truly worth.

He was a master of what's called value investing. This means he looked for stocks that were priced much lower than their real value. He would buy these stocks and hold onto them until their price reached what he thought was fair. His average holding time for a stock was about four years. He believed that buying stocks just because they were popular was risky.

Templeton was also a contrarian. This means he liked to do the opposite of what everyone else was doing. He famously said, "buy when there's blood in the streets." This means buying when the market is in trouble and prices are low. He also sold stocks when they became very popular and expensive.

His time at Oxford made him interested in investing all over the world. He was one of the first American investors to focus on countries like Japan and Eastern Europe. He even had trouble finding stockbrokers who spoke both Japanese and English in the 1950s! When Japanese stocks became popular, he sold them and bought U.S. stocks when they were cheap.

His main fund did better than the global stock market by about three percent each year throughout his career. He often did best during market crashes because his fund lost less money than others.

In 2005, he wrote a note predicting big financial problems, like a housing market crash. He also thought that in the future, traditional schools would become less important because of online learning.

Personal Life

John Templeton married Judith Folk in 1937, and they had three children: John, Anne, and Christopher. Sadly, Judith died in a motorbike accident in 1951. He married Irene Reynolds Butler in 1958, and she passed away in 1993.

He was a lifelong member of the Presbyterian Church. He served on the board of Princeton Theological Seminary, a large Presbyterian school, for 42 years.

In 1964, John Templeton gave up his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of the United Kingdom and the Bahamas. He lived in the Bahamas full-time from 1968. He said he did this because he planned to live in the Bahamas and felt he should be a citizen there.

John Templeton lived a simple life and was not interested in buying lots of expensive things. He never even flew first-class! A friend joked that he believed it was okay to make money as long as you didn't enjoy it too much.

Sir John Templeton passed away on July 8, 2008, in Nassau, Bahamas, at the age of 95. He died from pneumonia.

Wealth and Giving Back

John Templeton was one of the most generous people in history. He gave away over $1 billion to different charities and causes.

In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 Most Influential People. They recognized him for his efforts to understand spiritual ideas, often through scientific research, which he supported through his John Templeton Foundation.

As a philanthropist, he created several important organizations and awards:

• The Templeton Prize in 1972, which honors progress in understanding spiritual realities.
• The Templeton Library in Sewanee, Tennessee, which was meant to hold his writings and books about science and religion.
• Templeton College at the University of Oxford in England. He helped this management studies center become a full college of the university in 1995.

Templeton College later joined with Green College to form Green Templeton College in 2008.

He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1987 by the Queen of England for all his charitable work. In 1996, he was added to the Junior Achievement US Business Hall of Fame.

Templeton Religion Trust

The Templeton Religion Trust (TRT) is a global charity that Sir John Templeton started in 1984. It is based in the Bahamas, where he lived. Since 2012, TRT has supported projects that help people talk more about religion.

TRT wants to improve people's lives and societies by helping them grow spiritually. It also aims to improve our understanding of spiritual realities.

This trust is one of three charities Sir John Templeton created. The others are the John Templeton Foundation and the Templeton World Charity Foundation. They all have similar goals but work as separate groups.

John Templeton Foundation

Sir John Templeton was a dedicated Christian. However, he believed that humans still have much to learn about God and spiritual things. He called his approach "humble" and was open to learning from other faiths. He once said, "Why shouldn't I try to learn more? Why shouldn't I go to Hindu services? Why shouldn't I go to Muslim services?"

One of the main goals of the John Templeton Foundation is to support new discoveries about spiritual realities. The foundation gives money to people and groups who explore "big questions" about nature, the universe, love, and creativity.

In 2005, John Templeton explained the foundation's purpose: "We are trying to persuade people that no human has yet grasped 1% of what can be known about spiritual realities. So we are encouraging people to start using the same methods of science that have been so productive in other areas, in order to discover spiritual realities." In 2004, he gave another $550 million to the foundation to help it continue its work.

Books by John Templeton

Sir John Templeton wrote several books sharing his ideas on investing, spirituality, and life.

• The humble approach: Scientists discover God, 1981. ISBN: 0-8164-0481-X
• Templeton Plan: 21 Steps to Personal Success and Real Happiness, 1992. ISBN: 0-06-104178-5
• Discovering the Laws of Life, 1994. ISBN: 0-8264-0861-3
• Is God the Only Reality? Science Points to a Deeper Meaning of the Universe, 1994. ISBN: 0-8264-0650-5
• Golden Nuggets from Sir John Templeton, 1997. ISBN: 1-890151-04-1
• Worldwide Laws of Life: 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles, 1998. ISBN: 1-890151-15-7.
• Riches for the Mind and Spirit: John Marks Templeton's Treasury of Words to Help, Inspire, and Live By, 2006. ISBN: 1-59947-101-9
• Investing the Templeton Way: The Market-Beating Strategies of Value Investing's Legendary Bargain Hunter, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-07-154563-1
• Buying at the Point of Maximum Pessimism: Six Value Investing Trends from China to Oil to Agriculture, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-13-703849-7

See also

• John Templeton Foundation
• Templeton Prize
• John Templeton Jr.
• Franklin Templeton Investments
• Benjamin Graham, another famous value investor and teacher of Templeton
• Warren Buffett, another famous value investor and student of Benjamin Graham