Top 31 William J. Bernstein Quotes
#2. If your broker or investment advisor is not familiar with the concept of standard deviation of returns, get a new one.
William J. Bernstein
#3. It's bad enough that you have to take market risk. Only a fool takes on the additional risk of doing yet more damage by failing to diversify properly with his or her nest egg. Avoid the problem-buy a well-run index fund and own the whole market.
William J. Bernstein
#4. The reason that 'guru' is such a popular word is because 'charlatan' is so hard to spell.
William J. Bernstein
#5. A fast food job, for most people, should be an entry level position. If you see no path for advancement beyond that, it's time to take a real fast look at your human capital and learn a skill that will make you more money.
William J. Bernstein
#6. If you find yourself stimulated in any way by your portfolio performance, then you are probably doing something very wrong. A superior portfolio strategy should be intrinsically boring.
William J. Bernstein
#7. Humans abstract and record information in five major ways: with writing, mathematical notation, painting/photography/videography, maps, and clocks - that is, we can abstract and record verbal, numerical, visual, spatial, and temporal information.
William J. Bernstein
#8. We tend to extrapolate the recent past indefinitely into the future; in the 1970s, investors thought that inflation would never end, whereas now most people think it will never occur again. The first viewpoint was proven wrong within a few years, and the latter viewpoint most likely will be soon.
William J. Bernstein
#10. When it comes to fund managers and market strategists, this year's hero usually turns into next year's zero.
William J. Bernstein
#11. Bluntly put, there's no chance that your doctor, dentist, or attorney is a high-school dropout. Your stockbroker, however, just might be.
William J. Bernstein
#12. The key thing about any fund is to make sure its expenses are low. You know, if you look at the funds in your plan and you see that they're all charging 1.5 and 2 percent,you've gota bad plan.
William J. Bernstein
#13. It's pretty clear that there's a relationship between return and risk - you enjoy high returns only by taking substantial risk. If you want to earn high returns, be prepared to suffer grievous losses from time to time. And if you want perfect safety, resign yourself to low returns.
William J. Bernstein
#14. most paleographers now believe that the "idea of writing" must have spread along with commerce, most likely from Sumer to Egypt.33
William J. Bernstein
#15. all democratic societies based on the rule of law, on the Tinkerbell Principle: it functioned only so long as its participants believed in it.48
William J. Bernstein
#16. The typical fund company services 401k plan participants in the same way that Baby Face Nelson serviced banks.
William J. Bernstein
#17. The purpose of investing is not to simply optimise returns and make yourself rich. The purpose is not to die poor.
William J. Bernstein
#18. It's human nature to find patterns where there are none and to find skill where luck is a more likely explanation (particularly if you're the lucky manager).
William J. Bernstein
#19. The essence of effective portfolio construction is the use of a large number of poorly correlated assets.
William J. Bernstein
#20. The key aspect of an index fund is that many of them, not all of them, but many of them are extremely cheap.
William J. Bernstein
#21. In ancient societies, the law functioned as a two-edged sword; while standardizing procedure and bringing it out into the open, the law also concentrated power in those few who could read and write.
William J. Bernstein
#22. You have to understand what market history looks like. What market history tells you is that the very, very best investments are made when things look the worst.
William J. Bernstein
#23. During bull markets, everyone believes that he is committed to stocks for the long term. Unfortunately, history also tells us that during bear markets, you can hardly give stocks away. Most investors are simply not capable of withstanding the vicissitudes of an all-stock investment strategy. The
William J. Bernstein
#24. Mutual fund manager performance does not persist and the return of stock picking is zero.
William J. Bernstein
#25. If you still crave financial thrills or feel compelled to have exciting investments to talk about with folk at parties, then designate a very small corner of your portfolio as mad money, to be deployed in 'exciting' investments. Just make sure to promise yourself that when it's gone, it's gone.
William J. Bernstein
#26. Wall Street is littered with the bones of those who knew just what to do, but could not bring themselves to do it.
William J. Bernstein
#27. Personal finance, like most important aspects of life, is a never-ending quest. The competent investor never stops learning.
William J. Bernstein
#28. The definition of investment is the deferring ofpresent consumption for future consumption. So, you dohave to be willing to defer. And there are a couple of tricks that you can use to save money. One of them is simply to pay yourself first
William J. Bernstein
#29. Paradoxically, in the long run, bonds are at least as risky as stocks. This is because stock returns are "mean reverting." That is, a series of bad years is likely to be followed by a series of good ones, repairing some of the damage.
William J. Bernstein
#30. You have to ask yourself, what are the things that matter to you most in your life? If you have to have a latte every day that'snice to have right now, but if you take that latte every day right now, you may wind up eating cat food when you are 70. And you have to decide which is worse.
William J. Bernstein
#31. Market risk is like taking a plunge into a cool pool ... a lot of people are finding out right now what their risk tolerance is.
William J. Bernstein
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