The strategy of buying what's in favor is a fool's errand, ensuring long-term underperformance. Only by standing against the prevailing winds - selectively, but resolutely - can an investor prosper over time. But for a while, a value investor typically underperforms.

Value investing by its very nature is contrarian.

The cost of performing well in bad times can be relative underperformance in good times.

The overwhelming majority of people are comfortable with consensus, but successful investors tend to have a contrarian bent.

Be indifferent if you lose your short term clients, remember they are your own worst enemy

Why should the immediate opportunity set be the only one considered, when tomorrow's may well be considerably more fertile than today's?

Below, we itemize some of the quite different lessons investors seem to have learned as of late 2009 - false lessons, we believe. To not only learn but also effectively implement investment lessons requires a disciplined, often contrary, and long-term-oriented investment approach. It requires a resolute focus on risk aversion rather than maximizing immediate returns, as well as an understanding of history, a sense of financial market cycles, and, at times, extraordinary patience.