Markets need not be in sync with one another. Simultaneously, the bond market can be priced for sustained tough times, the equity market for a strong recovery, and gold for high inflation. Such an apparent disconnect is indefinitely sustainable.

When managers are afraid of redemptions, they get liquid. We all saw how many managers went from leveraged long in 2007 to huge net cash in 2008, when the right thing to do in terms of value would have been to do the opposite.

Most investors are primarily oriented toward return, how much they can make and pay little attention to risk, how much they can lose.

Over the long run, the crowd is always wrong.

Almost no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in precipitating a crisis: not leveraged speculators, not willfully blind leaders of financial institutions, and certainly not regulators, government officials, ratings agencies or politicians.

Short-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.

Patience and discipline can make you look foolishly out of touch until they make you look prudent and even prescient