Outperformance: Why dull isn't always boring

A colleague recently asked me: "Which is more important: the amount of outperformance a fund manager delivers, or when and how the outperformance is achieved?" It caused me to think back to the first time I walked on to a fund management floor 20 years ago. One of the first things I was told, in no uncertain terms, was that it is extremely important to outperform a rising market. On reflection, I have spent the subsequent 20 years broadly ignoring that advice, treading instead a very different path to this widely accepted wisdom. The industry generally accepts that returns should b...