Experience teaches that it is the big picture that makes the big difference

Throughout my three-decade search for the Holy Grail of investment, I naïvely presumed that was why others were in this business. I was so dumb that it took me a quarter of a century to learn the two crucial eternal verities, namely that it is the big picture that makes the big difference, and that the perspiring can only succeed if the inspiring do not really try. The Grail has had many names, the most recent one being alpha investing. However, that is little different in practice from asset allocation, which in practice is often a term used to wish away the need for market timing, which...