The philosophy-loving investor who beat the S&P 500 fifteen years in a row and bet early on Amazon and bitcoin.
Life story
Bill Miller (William H. Miller III) was born in 1950 in Laurinburg, North Carolina. His father was a terminal manager at a trucking company. He finished high school in Miami in 1968 and graduated with honors in economics from Washington and Lee University in 1972.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1972 to 1975, leaving as a captain, then pursued a PhD in philosophy at Johns Hopkins while working part-time in accounting. He has often said philosophy shaped his investment decisions.
How they got started
Miller first worked as treasurer of J.E. Baker Company, a maker of products for the steel and cement industries. He joined Legg Mason as a securities analyst in 1981 and earned his CFA in 1986. His Legg Mason Value Trust beat the S&P 500 for 15 straight years from 1991 to 2005, making him one of America's best-known fund managers.
After heavy losses in the 2008 financial crisis, Miller handed the Value Trust to another manager in 2012 and fully split from Legg Mason in 2016. With his son Bill Miller IV he continued Miller Value Partners as an independent firm, running the Opportunity Trust and the Miller Income fund launched in 2014.
Investment style
Miller calls himself a value investor, but defines value broadly: "any stock can be a value stock if it trades at a discount to its intrinsic value." He does not treat a low P/E as automatically cheap or a high P/E as automatically expensive, and favors "factor diversification" — mixing companies with very different valuation profiles.
That is why he made big bets on technology companies that other value investors avoided, and was willing to go against the crowd in a panic. The style produced big wins — and painful losses.
Best decisions
Amazon
Miller was an early and heavy investor in Amazon at a time when most analysts were skeptical — one of his best-known successes.
The 15-year streak (1991–2005)
The Value Trust beat the S&P 500 after fees for 15 consecutive years. Miller himself modestly called it "an accident of the calendar" and mostly luck.
Bitcoin
Though a traditional fund manager, Miller invested heavily in bitcoin — another example of his unconventional thinking.
Biggest mistakes
The 2008 financial crisis
Miller bet heavily on financials such as Bear Stearns and lost more than $100 million on it in 2008; his views from that period even appear in the film "The Big Short." The crisis badly hurt the Value Trust's reputation and assets.
Today
Miller retired from fund management at the end of 2022. The Opportunity Trust moved to Patient Capital Management, run by his longtime co-manager Samantha McLemore, while Miller Value Partners kept the Miller Income fund, managed by his son Bill Miller IV. Miller lives in Florida and has made major gifts to Johns Hopkins and Washington and Lee.
What to learn from following the portfolio
- Since 2023 this firm's portfolio has been run mainly by Bill Miller IV, not Bill Miller — don't confuse historical "Miller picks" with today's holdings.
- The Miller school is contrarian: buying stocks the market has abandoned is common, which means high volatility and long waits.
- An income-oriented fund may hold dividend-paying banks, REITs and heavily indebted companies, which are usually not halal. Check each position's halal status in the Portfolio tab.
- 13F data lags up to 45 days and shows only long U.S. stocks; bonds and other instruments are not shown.
An introduction based on public sources — not investment advice. Spotted an error? Let us know.