The average person canโt really trust anybody. They canโt trust a broker, because the broker is interested in churning commissions. They canโt trust a mutual fund, because the mutual fund is interested in gathering a lot of assets and keeping them. And now itโs even worse because even the most sophisticated people have no idea whatโs going on.
Seth KlarmanShort-term performance envy causes many of the shortcomings that lock most investors into a perpetual cycle of underachievement. Watch your competitors not out of jealousy but out of respect and focus your efforts not on replicating others' portfolios but on looking for opportunities where they are not. The only way for investors to significantly outperform is to periodically stand far apart from the crowd, something few are willing, or able, to do.
Seth KlarmanAll an investor can do is follow a consistently disciplined and rigorous approach; over time the returns will come
Seth KlarmanUnlike return, however, risk is no more quantifiable at the end of an investment that it was at its beginning. Risk simply cannot be described by a single number. Intuitively we understand that risk varies from investment to investment: a government bond is not as risky as the stock of a high-technology company. But investments do not provide information about their risks the way food packages provide nutritional data.
Seth Klarman