Bruce Berkowitz, President of Fairholme Fund, has been voted as the Investment Guru of Year 2009 by GuruFocus users. He got more than 30% of the total votes.

Bruce Berkowitz is arguably the most successful mutual fund manager of our time. He founded Fairholme Fund on Dec. 29, 1999, exactly 10 years ago at the peak of the tech bubble. Over the past 10 years, his fund has gained 236% cumulatively, while the S&P500 lost more than 10%.

With the motto of “Ignore the Crowd”, Bruce Berkowitz really delivered that. We have written a detailed article on how Bruce Berkowitz invests. The key factors of his success can be summarized at the following:

1. Concentrate the bets on the best ideas
   
2. Focus on Free Cash Flow
   
3. Invest with Capable Owner Oriented Managers
   
4. Buying on One-time event:
   
5. Borrow Ideas from the Best
   
6. Willing to Hold cash:
   

For details, please go to Concentrates his bets, BruceBerkowitz focuses on Berkshire Hathaway and Canadian National Resources

Over the past 10 years of managing Fairholme, Berkowitz had two down years, 2002 and 2008. In 2002, he was down 1.5%, while the market was down 22%. 2008 was a challenging year for him, he saw many of his holdings lost more than 50%, but he was down about 30%, while the market lost 37%. For the 12 months ended Nov. 30, 2009, he was up 41%.

Now Bruce Berkowitz joined other famed investors in our Investment Guru of the Year. These are the results for previous years:

• Investment Guru of the Year 2008: PremWatsa
  
  
• Investment Guru of the Year 2007: KenHeebner
  
  
• Investment Guru of the Year 2006: WarrenBuffett
  
  
• Investment Guru of the Year 2005: DavidDreman
  
  

In this year's nomination, hedge fund managers John Paulson and David Tepper each also got more than 20% of the votes. These two gurus are probably hottest hedge fund managers lately. John Paulson bet against the real estate bubble and made $15 billion in a single year. David Tepper reaped $7 billion in profit for his firm by scooping up bank stocks at their nadir, made himself $2.5 billion for the fee.

Note:

Since 2005, GuruFocus.com names its Investment Guru of the Year every year. It is done in December of each year with a democratic process controlled by GuruFocus users. The process involves two steps. In the first step GuruFocus.com asks users to nominate their choices of Investment Guru of the Year. The top 5-6 nominees will be put into a poll, and GuruFocus users will be able to vote for their Investment Guru of the year. The voting usually lasts a week and the person who gets the most of the vote will be named Investment Guru of the Year.

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