248 THE INTUITIVE INVESTOR
love investing. You need to exorcise the inner Ebenezer Scrooge
and replace him with the inner Warren Buffett: Mr. I-tap-dance-to-
work. (Warren seems to have put the “fun” back in “fund.”)
For my part, I will continue to watch with great interest as the
dialectic between the right and left brain—intellect and intuition—
plays itself out in the investment arena. One thing for sure, Wall
Street responds to what works. Right now, the spell of reason still
enjoys plenty of success. Bull markets and soaring brokerage prof-
its don’t require radical shifts. The prevailing attitude is: Don’t
worry, be happy.
But that may change over time. As the investing public gets
wiser and more money goes into passive funds, the squeeze may be
on. Investment firms will have to offer real value. They won’t be
able to bluff Joan Q. Public. She’ll be focusing on results, not
complicated theories and brilliant excuses. The intellectual smoke
and mirrors, though impressive, won’t matter, and certainly won’t
cut the mustard with disappointed investors. The majority of firms
will have to admit that they can’t outperform the benchmarks. The
band will stop playing and Joan will take her punch bowl and go
home.
When that happens, maybe, just maybe, we’ll see some cracks
in the armor of the intellectual fortress. Out of necessity, the lions
may ask the proponents of intuition to plead their case. In fact,
just recently I saw a tiny movement in this direction. The Associa-
tion for Investment Management and Research (AIMR), which is
to the investment community what the American Medical Associa-
tion is to the medical profession, asked me to develop a talk for its
members on the benefits of intuition in the investment process. You
could have knocked me over with a feather. This act may symbol-
ize the camel’s nose sneaking under the tent flap.
I can imagine a day when the top investment firms understand
that intellect and intuition should be in equal partnership. Left and
right will be balanced. Lion Kings and Royal Wizards will team up
to provide an unbeatable force.26-29 ware 248 1/19/01, 1:20 PM