Chicago Sun Times- Bonanza opportunities are all about spotting unfilled needs. Almost a quarter century ago, a young investment analyst at Chicago’s Harris Associates had a burning frustration over the lack of transparency in the daunting jungle of mutual fund and adviser performance. He turned that itch into initiative and turned the whole investment management world into a very clear goldfish bowl. In doing so, he built an information empire that’s worth $2.8 billion, and over half of it is his.
"I had become a fanatical believer in the power of mutual funds, but we were all wandering in the dark," recalls Joe Mansueto, founder and CEO of Morningstar Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN). "In 1984, in a search for any guidance on fund performance to help my clients, I began writing for advice to the smartest people in our field, like John Templeton. Before long, their responses began to pile up on my dining room table — a wide variety of evaluation and outlook opinion. Funds were proliferating in those early days and there was no organized system to compare them. I decided to create one — The Mutual Fund Sourcebook. It was a quarterly publication containing performance data, portfolio holdings and other info on over 400 funds. I priced it to be affordable to any individual investor."
