Conclusion

Although those quantitatively inclined would disagree, to me, investing is much more an art than a science. Intelligence, ex­perience, diligence, a knowledge of history, an open mind, and an obsessive nature are all important ingredients for the suc­cessful hedgehog—as are intuition, imagination, flexibility, and maybe just a touch of the seeing eye. How you mix and match, or what is the optimal combination of these characteristics, is beyond me. There is no single style.

It's not a resume thing, and investment success, in my opinion, has nothing to do with age. As that old cynic George Bernard Shaw put it: 'Men are wise not in proportion to their experience, but to their ca­pacity for experience." I have tried to explain in these pages that there is no checklist, no one single model for a long-only investor or a hedge­hog, but I do think that to flourish, the professional has to relish and be invigorated by intellectual competition and be able to handle stress and adversity. It’s not a game for the fainthearted or for the intellectually lazy. Being obsessed and driven by greed is not sufficient; you want your money manager to truly love and be fascinated with the complexity of the game. Obviously, however, as I have described, the game does burn out some of its most committed devotees, and the amateur as an em­ployer must be alert for signs of combat fatigue.

It's hard to be a hedgehog and it's far from easy to be a user of hedgehogs. All I can say is good luck.