What Drives Ariel Investments' John Rogers

John Rogers is a double anomaly. At a time when investors are increasingly turning to index funds, he picks individual stocks. And at a time when the market prefers growth-oriented companies, he buys value-priced shares. A former basketball star at Princeton, he launched Chicago-based Ariel Investments in 1983, at age 25. The firm's flagship public fund, Ariel Fund (symbol ARGFX), opened three years later. He's still lead manager of Ariel, which has returned an annualized 11.6% over the past decade, beating the Russell 2500 Value index by an average of 1.7 percentage points a year. (Returns and other data are as of September 14.)

I interviewed Rogers over lunch in Washington, D.C., at the Hay-Adams Hotel, across from the White House. Rogers was co-chair of President Obama's inaugural committee, and the