Vote in our poll: who is the greatest investor of all time?

His style of betting against the crowd and identifying bargains among quality stocks certainty worked as Sir John consistently beat the stock market.

Peter Lynch

The golden rule of Peter Lynch, who ran the giant Fidelity Magellan fund in America from 1977 to 1990, was to invest only in businesses which he understood.

This “invest in what you know” principle and his resolve to buy shares only that offered “growth at a reasonable price” helped Mr Lynch to produce gains of 29pc a year.

Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham, the man who taught Warren Buffett how to invest, advocated buying shares only if there was a “margin of safety” between your assessment of their value and the share price on the day.

By following this principle Mr Graham was able to find shares trading at bargain prices as he bought companies that were out of favour with the majority of other investors.

Mr Graham taught investing at Columbia university in New York, where his assistant was Irving Kahn - who is still an active investor at the age of 108.

John Maynard Keynes

Economist John Maynard Keynes was also a shrewd stock picker, delivering annual returns of 15pc between 1924 and 1946.

Mr Keynes changed his investment approach after the Wall Street crash in 1929, focusing on individual companies with strong earnings power as opposed to trying to guess which way stock markets were heading.

Neil Woodford

One of Britain's most well known stock pickers, Mr Woodford made his name running the Invesco Perpetual High Income and Income funds for 25 years, returning 2,213pc and 1,839pc respectively.

Mr Woodford, who now oversees the Woodford Equity Income fund, having left Invesco Perpetual earlier this year, managed to beat the stock market and his peers consistently through a series of bold calls about particular sectors; he famously avoided technology shares during the dotcom boom of the late Nineties.

Anthony Bolton

Another fund manager with an impressive long-term record. Mr Bolton’s Fidelity Special Situations fund, which invested in small UK businesses, returned 14,700pc from 1979 until his retirement in January 2008.

Mr Bolton was a "contrarian" investor who went against the crowd. One of his astute calls was buying technology stocks after the dotcom crash. The majority of fund managers refused to buy tech shares having been burnt a couple of years earlier, but Mr Bolton bought in at bargain prices and savers in his funds reaped the rewards.

Jim Slater

Jim Slater’s winning formula has won many admirers. One of his methods of finding cheap shares is to use a ratio called the “Peg”, which is the price to earnings or p/e figure divided by the annual growth rate of the company. The formula allows investors to determine whether the company's growth comes at a reasonable price.

In an article for The Telegraph last month Mr Slater named housebuilder Telford Homes and Restore, an Aim-listed company that provides secure shredding and recycling services, as two shares that pass his tests.

• More fund news and ideas: bookmark telegraph.co.uk/investing

• Like our Facebook 'Money' page at facebook.com/dailytelegraphmoney

more