John Kay

The Whiz Kids’ capacity for analysis far exceeded their knowledge of the world to which it was applied.

Three simple rules – pay less, diversify more, and be contrarian – will serve almost everyone well who invests.

Think probabilities and be detached. It’s hard advice to follow. That is why the financial services industry is better off than its customers.

The return on your portfolio is the aggregate of the returns on individual securities: the risk on your portfolio is not the aggregate of the risk of individual securities. With the aid of diversification you can earn more return with less risk.

The decline of GM is as instructive as its rise. The challenge of how to reconcile professional management with a culture of innovation remains for ever a central issue for management thinkers.

Typically reasons given for judgment are rationalisations after the event, the consultation is a formality rather than a sincere search for opinions, and the accountability is a matter of extensive paperwork rather than a genuine appraisal of performance.

The practical man must build out, step-by-step from the current situation – the science of muddling through.

Some economists believe there is a deep underlying structure from which laws of economic behaviour that are universal in time and space can be deduced. I think that search is a wild goose chase.

Economic crystal ball-gazing remains unscientific. We project current preoccupations with exaggerated speed and to an exaggerated degree and forget that our preoccupations change.

Pluralism is the mark of intellectual seriousness: recognition of the force of a wide range of arguments with which one does not agree.