By January 1973, Heebner was managing a small-cap portfolio with 70 stocks. It was the worst time to be in the market for anyone, let alone a fledgling fund manager. The market collapsed, with the Dow dropping 53% the next two years.

But Heebner's small-cap fund? Down 80%. "It wasn't just the market's fault. I made plenty of mistakes," he told IBD in 2004. "So I had to learn the business under very difficult conditions."

When the market bottomed in 1974, he bought growth companies with low price-to-earnings ratios. They grew quickly. Some of them tripled in the first half of the year. By the end of 1975, he had recovered all the fund's lost money.

The next year, the president of Loomis Sayles recruited him to take over its struggling Capital Development fund. As the fund's returns grew, Loomis Sayles managers started piling into the same stocks he was buying.

One of Heebner's secrets? He bets on a few companies tied to a gauge he can follow such as commodity prices or monthly same-store sales.

"Ken has the ability to see things earlier than most people," said Daniel Fuss, a portfolio manager and managing partner at Loomis Sayles. "He can connect dots much quicker. He can see bits of evidence out there that will alert him to something, and then he'll go check it out."

Buffett, the famed value investor, amassed his fortune by buying stocks trading below intrinsic value. IBD founder William O'Neil buys companies with innovative products and rising share prices.

What's Heebner's style? He just buys stocks that go up, Fuss says with a chuckle.

"No. 1, he's very bright. No. 2, he's a highly intuitive person. No. 3, he's a voracious consumer of research. No. 4, he thinks for himself. And No. 5, and most important, he has an exceptional ability to focus on the matter at hand," Fuss said.