Early in my career, I learned the key moneymaking lesson of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which holds that asset prices reflect all available information. If you seek superior investment results, you have to invest in things that others haven’t flocked to. In other words, you have to do something different.
But in a market that’s even moderately efficient, everything you do to depart from the consensus in pursuit of above average returns has the potential to result in below average returns if your departure turns out to be a mistake. Overweighting something versus underweighting it; concentrating versus diversifying; holding versus selling. You gain when you make the right choice and lose when you’re wrong.
Thus, investors have to answer what should be a very basic question: Will you (a) strive to outperform, an approach which costs money, is far from sure to work, and can result in your returns actually falling below average, or (b) accept average performance (which helps you reduce costs but also means you’ll have to look on with envy as winners report mouth-watering successes).