Investing is the intersection of economics and psychology.

Almost every financial blow up is because of leverage.

Loss avoidance must be the cornerstone of your investment philosophy.

Macro worries are like sports talk radio. Everyone has a good opinion which probably means that none of them are good.

Avoid organizing investment team into silos.

At the worst possible moment, when your fund is down because cheap things have gotten cheaper, you need to have capital, to have clients who will actually love the phone call and-most of the time, if not all the time-add, rather than subtract, capital.

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.