JEREMY GRANTHAM

Born in 1938 in Ware, England. Moved to the United States after earning his MBA.

Co-founded Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo (GMO) in 1977. The firm grew to manage over $120 billion at its peak.

GMO became famous for its 7-year asset class return forecasts — rigorous, mean-reversion-based projections that institutional investors treated like scripture. When GMO said an asset class was overvalued, pension funds listened.

Grantham called the Japanese bubble in 1989, the dot-com bubble in 2000, and the housing bubble in 2007 — each time warning years in advance. He was early on every call, which made him look wrong before he looked brilliant.

That's the cost of being a value investor in a momentum-driven world.

GMO (Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo) is the firm. At its peak it managed $120 billion.

Assets have declined significantly as value investing underperformed growth for most of the 2010s. GMO now manages roughly $60 billion.

The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment is his main philanthropic vehicle. He's committed over $1 billion to climate change and environmental causes — making him one of the largest individual donors to environmental causes in history.

He also co-founded the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics.

Pure mean-reversion value investing. Grantham believes asset prices always return to their long-term averages.

Always. No exceptions.

The only questions are when and how violently.

GMO builds models that estimate the fair value of every major asset class based on decades of historical data. When an asset trades far above fair value, they underweight it.

When it trades far below, they overweight it. Simple in theory, agonizing in practice — because bubbles can last years longer than anyone expects.

He's famously bearish. His quarterly letters read like dispatches from the apocalypse.

But his long-term track record justifies the tone.

Calling the 2008 housing crash. Grantham warned about the US housing bubble as early as 2005-2006.

GMO reduced exposure to mortgage-related assets and US equities before the crash. When the S&P 500 fell 57% from peak to trough, GMO's clients were relatively protected.

His 2008 letter titled "Reinvesting When Terrified" — advising clients to buy at the bottom — is considered one of the greatest investor letters ever written.

Being too early on the dot-com bubble. Grantham started warning about tech valuations in 1997.

The Nasdaq didn't peak until March 2000. GMO lost clients and assets during those three years of being "wrong." He was ultimately vindicated — the Nasdaq crashed 78% — but the business damage from being early was severe.

He's said that being three years early on a bubble call is functionally the same as being wrong.

Grantham believes in reversion to the mean with religious conviction. Asset prices that are two standard deviations above their long-term average will come back down.

Asset prices that are two standard deviations below will come back up. This isn't a theory — it's a statistical fact observed across centuries of market data.

He also believes climate change is the greatest investment risk of the next century. He's put his money where his mouth is, committing over $1 billion to environmental causes.

His advice to young investors: be patient, be contrarian, and study history obsessively.

Married to Hannelore Grantham. They have children but keep family life private.

Hannelore is actively involved in the family's environmental philanthropy. The Grantham Foundation is very much a family operation.

Born in Ware, England. Undergraduate degree from the University of Sheffield.

MBA from Harvard Business School. The Harvard network connected him with the partners who would later co-found GMO.