William J. Bernstein Quotes

Stock prices relative to company assets are no better at signaling the likelihood of future earnings growth than they were the day the Titanic sank, and risk management is a good deal worse.

Unfortunately, slow and steady in any financial market is actually impossible.

Maybe we should teach schoolchildren probability theory and investment risk management.

I don't pretend that I can predict the future value of the growth rate or rate of return.

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

There is enourmous pressure in the investment business to deliver good news. Good news sells better ….To go out there in a bubble and talk about overpriced markets is an invitation to get fired.

At the end of the day, VCs have to provide their limited partners with great returns, or they aren't going to be able to raise another fund.

The actions of hedge fund managers in exercising their fiduciary responsibilities to their investors is not the reason why Chrysler is in jeopardy.

Mutual funds with superior performance records often falter.

Entire populations of market strategists, fund managers, and economists are employed to try and intuit for clients which securities to bet on for the best possible return each year - or quarter.

Throughout the universe of public and private funds, managers are measured quarterly against one index or another, defined by statistics, and corralled into this category or that category so that fund of funds, pensions, and other institutions can make comforting - if not necessarily prudent - asset allocation decisions.

There are a lot of parallels between being a mutual fund manager and being a general manager. Both in the financial markets and in baseball, we're dealing with a world where uncertainty reigns. We're trying to predict the future performance of human beings. It's a fundamental difficulty for which we both have to account.

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

If I have noticed anything over these 60 years on Wall Street, it is that people do not succeed in forecasting what's going to happen to the stock market.

Absent a lot of surprises, stocks are relatively predictable over twenty years. As to whether they're going to be higher or lower in two to three years, you might as well flip a coin to decide.

You could lose hundreds or thousands one day on paper and gain it all back the next, and it has literally no effect on your immediate future, provided the money you have in the market is money you're investing for the long haul (meaning at least three to five years).

The average investor's return is significantly lower than market indices due primarily to market timing.

Even from the very beginning, I didn't put any money in the stock market.

I had some airline stock, but the airlines tanked. I didn't have a lot of money in them, though.

In questioning initially whether I am a great investor, I open the door to question whether other similarly esteemed public icons like Bill Miller are as well. It seems, perhaps, that the longer and longer you keep at it in this business the more and more time you have to expose your Achilles heel - wherever and whatever that might be.

There is no safe haven in today's markets.

As a rule, bond funds will not double your money overnight.

There's a tendency to look at investments in isolation. Investors focus on the risk of individual securities.

The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.

I'm not a money manager, but I can tell you what the conventional wisdom is. The younger you are, the more risk you can take on.