In 1959 he founded the New York money management firm now known as Train, Babcock Advisors. He is chairman of the Montrose Group, investment advisors and tax accountants, and is a director of a number of emerging markets mutual funds. He is the founder and chairman of the Train Foundation, which annually awards the Civil Courage Prize, most recently in the U.S. Embassy residence in London.

John Train was the only child of the second marriage of Arthur Train, a district attorney in New York City and the author of the "Ephraim Tutt" stories that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in the 1930s and 1940s, to the delight of attorneys nationwide. A descendent of an old New England family, he is a cousin of Senator Claiborne Pell, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and of Russell E. Train, head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency under Richard Nixon and founding trustee and former chairman of the World Wildlife Fund. His half-siblings include ambassadors, military officers and other officials.

Train received part-time appointments from Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton as a director of government agencies and entities dealing with Africa, Asia, and Central Europe.

Train has several decorations by the Italian government for his humanitarian work, and is an officer of the Order of St. John. In 1980, he helped to establish the Afghanistan Relief Committee to provide medicine and food to the victims of the Soviet invasion. He served first as its treasurer and later as its president. The ARC merged with the International Rescue Committee, whose board he joined.

Train has written numerous columns in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, London's Financial Times, and other publications. Also, over 20 books, translated into 15 languages, including:

• Money Masters of Our Time (HarperCollins)
• Investing and Managing Trusts Under the New Prudent Investor Rule: A Guide for Trustees, Investment Advisors, & Lawyers (Harvard)
• The Craft of Investing (HarperCollins)
• The Midas Touch: The Strategies That Have Made Warren Buffett 'America's Preeminent Investor' (HarperCollins)
• Dance of the Money Bees: A Professional Speaks Frankly on Investing (HarperCollins)
• The Olive: Tree of Civilization (Scala)
• The Orange: Golden Joy (Scala)
• Comfort Me With Apples (Scala)

A witty raconteur, he has also written a number of amusing little books, including "John Train's Most Remarkable Names," "Most Remarkable Occurrences," "Wit: The Best Things Ever Said," "Love," and others (mostly HarperCollins), all in the same format, which have proven to be perennially-popular stocking stuffers.

He is an overseer of the Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University (affiliated with the United Nations), and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He has three daughters, one of whom became an active member of his firm and another who was married to the late Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov.