William J. Bernstein Quotes

Wealthy investors should realize that they are the cash cows of the investment industry, and that most of the exclusive investment vehicles available to them - separate accounts, hedge funds, limited partnerships, and the like - are designed to bleed them with commissions, transactional costs, and other fees.

It is often said that a monkey could run an index fund. Nothing could be further fro the truth. Precisely tracking an index requires a very high degree of market savvy, discipline and nerve.

When the barbarians are at the gates, interest rates rise and bond prices fall precipitously.

Investment planning and execution are two completely different animals.

Investing is not a destination. It is an ongoing journey through its four continents - theory, history, psychology and business.

The Gordon Equation is as close as being a physical law, like gravitation or planetary motion, as we will ever encounter in finance.

The brokerage and mutual fund business form a financial colossus that bestrides modern financial, and increasingly, social and political life.

The wealthy are different than you and I: they have many more ways of having their wealth stripped away.

Ninety-nine percent of what you read about investing in magazines and newspapers, and 100% of what you hear on television is worse than useless.

Owning a portfolio of value stocks is the equivalent of wearing a Nehru jacket over a pair of bell bottom trousers.

And lest I offend art lovers, it should be pointed out that even an old master, bought from the the artist for $100 and sold 350 years later for $10,000,000, has returned only 3.34% per year.

Human beings are not very good at taking losses or admitting failure.

If markets were truly efficient, then you shouldn't be able to make any money rebalancing.

In fact, the nation's biggest investment pools are the retirement funds of the large corporations and governmental bodies, such as the California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS), which manages an astounding $170 billion. These plans receive a level of professional management that even the nations wealthiest investors can only dream of.

We tend to think of the stock and bond markets as relatively recent historical phenomena, but, in fact, there have been credit markets since human civilization first took root in the Fertile Crescent.