I talk to hundreds of companies a year and spend hour after hour in heady pow-wows with CEOs, financial analysts and my colleagues in the mutual-fund business, but I stumble onto the big winners in extracurricular situations, the same way you do.

You only need a few good stocks in your lifetime. I mean how many times do you need a stock to go up ten-fold to make a lot of money? Not a lot.

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.

Investing in stocks is an art, not a science, and people who've been trained to rigidly quantify everything have a big disadvantage.

Your investor's edge is not something you get from Wall Street experts. It's something you already have. You can outperform the experts if you use your edge by investing in companies or industries you already understand.

Avoid hot stocks in hot industries.

I like to buy a company any fool can manage because eventually one will.