Fortune Magazine November 15, 2006:
“The greatest money manager of our time
What do ant colonies, novels and river systems have to do with making money? Ask Bill Miller, the man who's topped the market 15 years running. Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer reports. …
In case you haven't heard of him, Bill Miller is one of the greatest investors of our time. Refreshingly, he isn't some sort of billionaire hedge fund recluse. Miller runs an ordinary mutual fund, the $20 billion Legg Mason Value Trust, where he has produced extraordinary returns.
As it stands now, Miller has compiled one of the most remarkable records in the history of investing: His fund has outperformed the stock market for 15 straight years. That's right, 15 years, starting in 1991 - during George Bush the elder's presidency - through the tech bull market, then the crash and now the recovery.
That puts him in the same league as Peter Lynch, George Soros, even Warren Buffett. In recent years Miller has inadvertently added to the drama of his DiMaggio-like streak by falling behind in the first half, only to come roaring back in the fall and pass the market at the last minute. This year Miller's fund again got trounced by the market in the spring, and since then it has come back, only this time there's a difference. As of early November, Miller was still about 10 percentage points behind the S&P 500. So it is almost certain that he has too much ground to make up and that the streak will be broken. If you don't believe me, ask Miller: "It's unlikely I'll beat the market this year," he says, though he certainly thinks the condition will be temporary.”
Any reader of Naseem Taleeb’s brilliant book Fooled by Randomness would not be surprised by what came next:
Legg Mason Value Trust is = - 28.4% ytd through June 30,2008 underperforming the s+p 500 by 17.46%
3 year return is -8.52% (12.17% worse than the s+p 500)
5 year return is -.53% (8.03% worse than the s+p 500)
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