Investment Success Occurs over the Long Term

Jul 2013

Simply put, investment returns over a few weeks, months or even years are not sufficient to project long-term results.  Investors need to consider all of history, not just their most recent experiences.  As a related point, every successful long-term investor will experience disappointing results for periods of weeks, months or years.  Indeed, I can’t think of a single successful long-term investor (Graham, Templeton, Lynch, Buffett, etc.) who hasn’t suffered temporarily weak results.  When investors seek perfection, they are likely to run into trouble.