The best stock-pickers in the US and Europe reveal the secrets to their success in 2020 - and share their highest-conviction bets for 2021

• The best-performing mutual fund managers of 2020 earned their success by foreseeing big investment themes that benefited from the pandemic.
• Business Insider interviewed the nine top performers in the US, and the five in Europe, to learn about their strategies and what they have up their sleeves for 2021.

COVID-19 changed the world - and it also accelerated many trends that were already underway in the version of society that existed beforehand.

Several investors who outshined their peers this year had the foresight to plug into trends that became essential for our new reality. That's what Business Insider's investing team learned as we interviewed the top-performing mutual fund managers of 2020 in the US and Europe.

Stocks like vaccine developer Moderna (+700% this year) and streaming service Roku (+129%) were already big holdings in their portfolios. A relatively obscure biotech company was the largest holding for Dennis Lynch, the top performer this year and a frontrunner for the last decade.

And as ARK Invest's Cathie Wood said, "so many trends that were well in place before the COVID crisis have gained so much more traction. Because of that, our companies have outperformed significantly."

Some of the big stock market winners were not direct pandemic beneficiaries. Tesla's seemingly unstoppable rally created breakout performances for multiple portfolio managers. And in Europe, where the likes of Tesla and its 600%-plus gain this year are scarcer, fund managers used old-fashioned fundamental analysis to find cheap yet promising stocks.

In addition to learning about what worked this year, we asked these pros for their 2021 outlooks: investment ideas they expect to continue reaping from, and new frontiers they are exploiting to maintain their chart-topping performance.

Read our interviews with the 9 best-performing stock pickers in the US here.

Read our interviews with the 5 top fund managers in Europe here.