Forbes magazine has recently produced its list of the 400 richest people on America, and while some of the names are fairly predictable, others may surprise you.
According to the list, 278 of the top 400 are described as 'self-made', and these include such well-known names as Bill Gates of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT.US), in first place again with $59 billion, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (LSE: AMZN.US) 13th, with $19.1 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook 14th, with $17.5 billion at the age of 27.
Eighteen are newcomers to the list, including Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn (NASDAQ: LNKD.US), and Eric Lefkofsky of Groupon, and Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.
The top five
In second place after Bill Gates is Warren Buffett, who is no stranger to readers of the Motley Fool, with wealth of $39 billion. Larry Ellison of Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL.US) takes third place with $33 billion, while brothers Charles and David Koch, of privately-held oil-to-ranching conglomerate Koch Industries, register $25 billion each.
Investment greats
In addition to Warren Buffett, many others from our Investment Greats series feature on the list.
George Soros comes in at seventh place with wealth of $22 billion, while John Paulson is at seventeenth on $15.5 billion, more than making up for high-profile losses on banks and Sino-Forest by holding gold.
Carl Icahn's $13 billion is enough to put him in 25th place, with Wilbur Ross's $2.1 billion putting him in 200th place, and Ken Fisher's $1.7 billion putting him in 263rd.
Of all the investors of various types on the list, I haven't been able to find any who made their money from day-trading or technical analysis.
Hedge funds
Hedge fund managers account for 26 of the top 400, and some would say it's little wonder when they're charging typically 'two-and-twenty' -- 2% of the capital, plus 20% of profits over a certain benchmark -- for their services.
Among their ranks are Soros' protege Stanley Druckenmiller, 'Quant King' James Simons, and former cotton trader Paul Tudor Jones.
Leveraged buyouts
Leveraged buyout operators are also well represented with 13 places on the list. Perhaps the best know of these to British public would be Henry Kravis and George Roberts, who along with Jerome Kohlberg formed the famous KKR (NYSE: KKR.US), which bought Boots in 2007.
It will be interesting to see how well they all hold onto their wealth in the year ahead.