Paul Samuelson Quotes

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

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

All the time and effort people devote to picking the right fund, the hot hand, the great manager have, in most cases, led to no advantage.

Whether a tops-down or bottoms-up investor in bonds, stocks, or private equity, the standard analysis tends to judge an investor or his firm on the basis of how the bullish or bearish aspects of the cycle were managed.

Returns matter a lot. It's our capital.

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.

Everybody has a different strategy, but everybody agrees that active management does not beat the market.

Most investors would be better off in an index fund.

Mutual fund manager performance does not persist and the return of stock picking is zero.

My investments have been hurt.

In college, I was told the market can't be beat.

Pension funds, endowments, and private investors trust Mitt Romney's former company Bain Capital enough to hand it billions of dollars in assets.

Mutual fund managers are trapped in this rather deadly vicious circle: the more successful they are, the more money flows into their mutual fund. Then, it is more difficult for them to beat the market averages or even to match their own past performance.

Successful hedge funds will be entrepreneurial; it is the essence of the craft.

Having different types of stocks in your portfolio can enhance returns.

I'm making a case against how money managers are handling customers' money. The objective of the customer is not being met if the fund managers are diversifying their assets into hundreds of businesses. If they do this, they are typically performing close to the indexes. But that's not the way wealth is created.

I almost always recommend investors get fully invested, since it's better to put your money to work than to let it simply track the rate of inflation.

Commissions add up, taxes are a big drag, margin ain't cheap. A good accountant costs money as well. The math on this one is obvious, yet investors often fail to recognize it: Keep your costs low and your turnover lower, and you will win in the end.

With a regular venture fund, you raise, let's say, a billion dollars, and then over the next three or four years, you've got to invest that money; otherwise, the people who invested with you will say, 'What are you doing? You're just collecting fees on our money.'

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

I've been investing in the stock market for 27 years and, within that time, have helped investors beat the market nearly four to one.

Often, investors will discover a manager after he's had a terrific run, usually when he lands on a magazine cover somewhere. Invariably, funds swell up with new investor money just before they revert to their long-term averages.

Active investment is a zero-sum game. Passive managers don't play the game. They buy something resembling the market as a whole, or some segment of the market, and they don't respond to the actions of active managers.

If you're trading individual securities, you're almost certainly making a mistake. Because most professional managers can't outperform their benchmarks, and there's little reason to think that individuals can.

We think that excellence in investing comes from focus.