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b"Twelve Key Insights from the World\\u2019s Top Investors
On one of my recent commentaries, I spoke about Howard Marks and shared some of his investing philosophies with you. Today, I want to share 12 key insights that are commonly shared by the 99 top investors in the world\\u2026 but, first, let me give you some background.
Magnus Angenfelt is a retired hedge fund manager and financial journalist from Sweden who recently wrote a book titled The World\\u2019s 99 Greatest Investors: The Secret of Success where he looks at the top 99 investors by highest absolute returns irrespective of investment style. His list includes some names you know and many you likely do not\\u2014folks such as John Bogle, Warren Buffett, Leon Cooperman, Ken Fisher, Mario Gabelli, Carl Icahn, Mark Mobius, Julian Robertson, George Soros, David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones, Martin Zweig and more.
Angenfelt says, on average, his chosen 99 most successful investors outperformed the market by about 12 percentage points each year for 25 years.
Investing Styles of the Most Successful Investors
In the top 99, investing styles vary quite a bit, from value investing to speculating to quantitative-based trading. More than half of the top 99 are from the U.S. and, of these, about half are value investors who buy good stocks when they are marked down.
But his list does not include prominent investors such as bond king Bill Gross of PIMCO simply because, as Angenfelt puts it, neither Gross nor any other investor who solely focuses on bonds made the cut because their returns are simply too poor, relative to returns from equity investments.
The list has no women either, again, simply because no women made the cut purely on returns delivered over 25 years, even though the author names women investors such as Susan Byrne of Westwood Management who has produced better returns than many men\\u2014but not enough to qualify in the top 99.
12 Insights from World's Top Investors
And one of my favorite investment websites, gurufocus.com, compiled a list of Angenfelt\\u2019s top 12 insights that were common to almost all of the top 99. Here\\u2019s the list:

* Be true to yourself. As Guy Spier, a Harvard-trained investor puts it, \\u201cMy job is to be Guy Spier. I\\u2019m not going to do a very good job of beingBill Ackmanor Warren Buffett,\\xa0but I\\u2019m going to do a damned good job of being Guy Spier, better than anybody on the planet. Everybody\\u2019s path is unique and I think it\\u2019s really, really important that we find our own path.\\u201d
* Know your strengths and weaknesses.
* Consider the risks, not the potential. This one goes back to Howard Marks\\u2019 comment on playing \\u201cnot loser\\u2019s tennis,\\u201d which is basically about focusing on the risks as much as on the rewards so you avoid loss-making investments.
* Be prepared to change your strategy if the market changes.This is a key insight\\u2014a lot changes over a 25-year period. Just compare, for example, our world and lifestyle in 1989 to where we are today in 2014. Much has changed. So, these top 99 investors have been very adept at keeping their ears to the ground for seismic changes in the investing landscape and making moves ahead of others to deliver outstanding returns\\u2026 without being stuck to rigid strategies, while also being core to their fundamental approach to investing. For example, Buffett was a value investor then and is a value investor now, but he has changed his strategy over the years\\u2014 from small businesses to big businesses, from domestic-only to international, and from non-tech to selectively tech. So, markets evolve and great investors evolve with them.
* Don\\u2019t invest on the basis of tips. I think many individual investors are fairly shallow on due diligence and tend to implicitly p..."