Time for Tennis

There is a video clip doing the rounds of Roger Federer saying that he won 80% of his matches but only 54% of his points. Similarly, Charley Ellis, the legendary investor and chair of David Swenson’s Yale Endowment committee, was heard to give the following top tennis tips at a conference:

• Serve the same twice, never a strong one followed by a weak one

• If you manage to make the return twice, you’ll win every set

• Return three times and you’ll win almost every point

• Be comfortable with 80% of your first serves going in.

The point across all these tips is this consistency earns you regular points and demoralizes your opponent. At Yoke we’re not tennis players, let alone coaches, but we can recognise the benefits of consistency in a style that is compounded by modest gains.

And if only to demonstrate our commitment to consistency, we’re not going to write a blog that doesn’t have an investment lesson in it. It’s easy to look at short term, superficial metrics such as one year performance, but the hard bit is understanding the underlying process. It takes time, even for experts, to learn someone else’s process and how they will miss 46% of their shots, or stock choices. After some time you’ll find that if they manage to get more than half right, they are more likely to outperform in 80% of their matches, and by then they’ll have faithful, committed supporters who’ll see them though the 20% of matches and 46% of points they lose. 

Yoke wants the best results for you, and that doesn’t mean swapping managers every time you look (even if that would give us more business). We want our clients to be consistent investors, only changing when something is clearly broken.

If you would like further information on our approach, please do contact us.