Kenneth Fisher

American investment adviser

Kenneth Fisher was born in San Francisco, California, the son of influential stock investor Philip A. Fisher. Fisher was raised in San Mateo, California. As a 13 year old, he earned $1.20 an hour picking fruit, sawing and fertilizing. In 2015, Fisher was appointed to the board of advisors of the Forbes School of Business at Ashford University. Over the past few decades, Fisher helped Fisher Investments become one of the largest independent money managers in the world. Having started the firm in 1979 with $250, it would grow to over $100 billion in assets under management as of 2015. In 2007, Fisher and Thomas Grüner founded Grüner Fisher Investments in Germany.

Fisher is founder and chairman of Fisher Investments, an independent money management firm. He founded the firm in 1979, incorporated in 1986, and was CEO until July 2016, when he was succeeded by long time employee Damian Ornani. Fisher remains active as the firm's executive chairman and co chief investment officer.

Fisher's theoretical work identifying and testing the price to sales ratio (PSR) is detailed in his 1984 Dow Jones book, Super Stocks. James O'Shaughnessy credits Fisher with being the first to define and use the PSR as a forecasting tool. In Fisher's 2006 book, The Only Three Questions That Count, he states that the PSR is widely used and known, and no longer as useful as an indicator for undervalued stocks. According to The Guru Investor by John P. Reese and Jack M. Forehand, in the late 1990s, Fisher defined his investment philosophy after studying the stock returns and P/E Ratios between January 1976 and June 1995 of six investment categories: large cap value, mid cap value, small cap value, large cap growth, mid cap growth, and small cap growth. Small cap value was not defined as an investing category until the late 1980s. Fisher Investments was among the institutional money managers offering small cap value investing to clients in the late 1980s.

Fisher is married, with three adult sons, Nathan, Jesse and Clayton. He lives in Dallas, Texas. Fisher's ongoing study of redwood ecology, particularly the emerging field of study of redwood canopies, grew from his childhood in San Mateo, California, near old redwood logging camps. Fisher's personal library contains more than 3000 volumes of regional logging history.

In 2006, Fisher gave $3.5 million to endow the Kenneth L. Fisher Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State. The gift supports redwood ecology research in perpetuity and provides support for graduate students, laboratories, and field equipment; the research has focused particularly on canopy studies. Fisher's goal in creating the chair was to transform our understanding of trees and forests.

Together with his spouse, Fisher contributed $250,000 to Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign.

In October 2019, Fisher was criticized for references he made during a fireside chat at an industry conference sponsored by Tiburon Strategic Advisors. Bloomberg initially reported that Fisher made references to genitalia and likened winning money management clients to "trying to get into a girls' pants." In a Bloomberg interview at the time, Fisher said he felt his comment were taken out of context. In February 2020, Bloomberg clarified their reporting and wrote that Fisher cautioned against using financial planning as a way to sign up new clients and compared it to approaching a woman at a bar. A recording made at the Tiburon conference, obtained by CNBC and referenced by Bloomberg, captures Fisher saying "you wouldn't go up to a woman in a bar and ask what's in your pants." On October 11, 2019, it was announced that in response to Fisher's comments, the state of Michigan withdrew its pension fund of $600 million from Fisher Investments. On October 16, 2019, the city of Boston pulled their $248 million pension fund from Fisher Investments due to Fisher's off color comments. Other repercussions followed. Fidelity announced it was reviewing the $500 million in assets that it has Fisher's organization manage, and Philadelphia's board of pensions terminated its relationship with Fisher. Within weeks of the incident Fisher Investments lost more than $2.7 billion as several institutional clients, including government pensions, severed their relationship with the firm. The firm Fisher founded is taking action as well. Fisher Investments Chief Executive Damian Ornani wrote a memo to employees stating: “Ken's comments were wrong.” He said the firm was taking steps to address diversity and inclusion within the organization itself. Reporting from Bloomberg L. P. contended that this behavior was commonplace at Fisher Investments and that Fisher himself had made derogatory remarks a number of times before.