Beating the S&P/ASX 200 Index (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) year in and year out is no easy task. While some institutional funds managed by the likes of Perpetual Limited (ASXL: PPT), IOOF Holdings Limited (ASX: IFL) and BT Investment Management Ltd (ASX: BTT) do have solid track records of outperformance, on balance the average institutional fund is going to produce just that – average results.
Jason Zweig is one of the most interesting writers on the difficulties investors must overcome to be successful – specifically Zweig is interested in how investors need to train their brains to think rationally.
In a recent article published in The Wall Street Journal, Zweig highlights the journey one outperforming fund manager, Guy Spier, has been on over the past 17 years as he's tried to "re-wire" his brain to think more like Warren Buffett.
Spier has taken this journey so far that he even uprooted himself from New York where there was too much market noise, to a quiet office in Zurich. In many ways Spier has done his best to strip away all of the trapping of being a fund manager and return to solitude to gain the advantage that the individual investor possesses.
And what is the biggest advantage you ask – the ability to play by your own rules, not the markets. As Zweig puts it: "That way, you exploit the true advantages of individual investors that most professionals would kill to have: patience, independence and the ability to ignore the braying of the crowd."