Ron Chernow Quotes

Investors tend to discover 'hot' mutual fund managers just after a successful run and just before the inescapable force of mean reversion is about to kick in.

Mutual funds with superior performance records often falter.

My investments have been hurt.

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.

Venture-capital firms invest in trends by projecting returns. But most projections are pretty much bogus, and research shows that experts are no better at predicting the future than dart-throwing monkeys.

There's so much disagreement about investing, and it's because nobody really knows.

In general, the hedge funds were clobbered by the 1969 bear market, ending up in many cases with records that were worse than those put together by aggressive mutual funds denied the luxury of short sales.

If the fluctuations in your investment portfolio are reduced, the impact of emotions and behavior on your account is also reduced.

You can invest with less risk and make more money in the stock market. All you have to do is not be an average investor. Intelligence is the ability to make finer distinctions.

People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

Every time we make an investment decision at FedEx, we ask ourselves: 'What is the return on this investment?'

Investors have to ask themselves two questions. How much can we grow our investments? And, can we afford our mistakes?

Mutual funds give people the sense that they're investing with the big boys and that they're really not at a disadvantage entering the stock market.

A financial crisis is a great time for professional investors and a horrible time for average ones.

I don't invest in the stock market. I did it a long, long time ago when I was really young, and I got involved in all the investigations and all the prosecutions, and I felt it was better if I didn't make individual investments. So I'm invested in funds, but not in individual - not in individual stocks.

I think over any period of time, especially if you don't use leverage, it is difficult to continually beat the S&P 500.

Plenty of funds have fine long-term returns despite being tax-inefficient and generally costly. But a dirty secret is this: Average, no-load fund investors do much worse than the funds - or the market.

Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes.

The mutual fund industry and small investors are very relentless and very unforgiving if people don't perform.

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

I have no complaints about losing money I put in high-risk investments. I did some of that when I had real money; my informed choice, my measured gamble.

Any Wall Street advertising that does not go into the boring details of methodology is most likely to be pushing past performance.

There's never been a good period of venture capital when prices weren't high.

I'm sometimes accused of being hostile to mutual funds. That's not fair, really. There is a place for them. Still, I am hostile to one thing, which is trying to use funds to time your way in and out of the market. That's a recipe for very bad results.

Mutual fund managers want your money in their funds. They get paid based on assets under management.