New Delhi, Nov. 11 -- His name often crops up in India's gloriously unhinged political discourse, yet it is easy to forget that George Soros ranks among the greatest investors of all time. His flagship multibillion-dollar hedge fund, Quantum, once the world's largest, delivered a compounded annual return of about 30% for three decades beginning in the 1970s, outperforming Wall Street titans like Warren Buffett.

In his bestselling book The Alchemy of Finance, Soros recounts an investing episode which offers a window into his mindset and tactical nous.

In the early 1970s, banking stocks were among the least favoured by investors. Banks were seen as stodgy, old-school institutions which had still not recovered from the traumatic failures o...