Larry sheds light on the secrets of endowment success. First, he encourages investors to be long-term investors in behavior rather than claiming to be one. Another endowment principle to consider is avoiding performance chasing. Third, keep your investment costs low. Fourth, don’t do what everyone else is doing. Fifth, don’t fear boards and committees. Finally, liquidity is something to consider for your long-term investment strategy. Larry encapsulates his thoughts with a witty quote, “You are not so smart, and other people are not so stupid.”
We’ll be interviewing Larry on upcoming Intelligent Money Minute podcast episodes, so be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already. Larry mentioned that the world’s population growth explosion looks to taper off this century, leading to more prosperous countries and individuals, which should allow us to solve some of the environmental enigmas that we currently face. 
We agree with Larry’s advice on Investment success. Two of our wealth management principles are patience and discipline. Patience is the decision not to do something wrong. The more often you change your portfolio–actually, there’s evidence that the more often you even look at your portfolio–the lower the return will be. We want to be patient and let investment themes and strategies play out. The second principle is Discipline. Discipline is the decision to keep doing the right things. Discipline says, “I don’t care what’s working now; I care about what’s always worked, and I’m going to persist in doing the things that have, most reliably, always worked.” To learn more about our wealth management principles, please visit our website.
Larry Siegel Bio
Laurence B. Siegel is the Gary P. Brinson director of research at the CFA Institute Research Foundation and an author, consultant, and speaker on investment management and economics. Before retiring from full-time work in 2009 he was director of research at the Ford Foundation and, before that, head of research at Ibbotson Associates (since acquired by Morningstar). He attended the University of Chicago (BA 1975, MBA 1977). His book, Fewer, Richer, Greener, has been published by Wiley and is available, along with his other work, at http://www.larrysiegel.org.