William J. Bernstein Quotes

I think you'll do as well as most professionals. Most professionals don't beat the market. Let's not over-rate my industry. But if you have time, you can be in good mutual funds that have good records.

Although professionals are able to extract a considerable amount of wealth from amateurs, few stock pickers, if any, have the skill needed to beat the market consistently, year after year.

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

Ex-Fidelity mutual fund manager Peter Lynch was certainly brilliant in one respect: he knew to get out when the gettin' was good.

There are a lot of idiot fund managers out there who add no value to the process at all.

Fund investors are confident that they can easily select superior fund managers. They are wrong.

The deeper one delves, the worse things look for actively managed funds.

Perhaps there really are managers who can outperform the market consistently - logic would suggest that they exist. But they are remarkably well-hidden.

We believe that almost all really good investment records will involve relatively little diversification. The basic idea that it was hard to find good investments and that you wanted to be in good investments, and therefore, you'd just find a few of them that you knew a lot about and concentrate on those seemed to me such an obviously good idea. And indeed, it's proven to be an obviously good idea. Yet 98% of the investing world doesn't follow it. That's been good for us.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.

The determining trait of the enterprising (or active, or aggressive) investor is his willingness to devote time and care to the selection of securities that are both sound and more attractive than the average.

99% of fund managers demonstrate no evidence of skill whatsoever.

More money is lost anticipating the changes in the overall stock market than any other way of investing.

Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are.

I believe the only things that really matter in investing are the bubbles and the busts

We know that by simply changing our allocation between stocks and bonds, we can lessen the amount of volatility in our portfolio until we reach our comfortable sleep level.

No one in his right mind would walk into the cockpit of an airplane and try to fly it, or into an operating theater and open a belly. And yet they think nothing of managing their retirement assets. I've done all three, and I'm here to tell you that managing money is, in its most critical elements even more demanding than the first two.

A vast industry of stockbrokers, financial planners, and investment advisers skims a fortune for themselves off the top in exchange for passing their clients' money on to people who, as a whole, cannot possibly outperform the market.

There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don't understand it, then put your life savings into it. Shun the enterprise around the corner, which can at least be observed, and seek out the one that manufactures an incomprehensible product.

To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.

I've never invested in any airline. I'm an airline manager. I don't invest in airlines. And I always said to the employees of American, 'This is not an appropriate investment. It's a great place to work and it's a great company that does important work. But airlines are not an investment.'

I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am no investor.

In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility.

Owning stocks is like having children - don't get involved with more than you can handle.

Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.