i can't remember a single year in which he was the best performing manager
That would be precisely the wrong metric to look at to see how a good long-term investor is: the absolute best performer in a given year is very likely to be the guy who threw darts at just the right stocks on the wall.
bullshit bullshit. average "long term" investor is in and out of single stocks in two years or less. you're at the far end of the bell curve for people who hold for four years. the myth of the "long term" investor is just that. the reality is most people hold equities for less than a year.
and "long term" is not a definitively superior investment strategy. look at the dow chart for the 20th century, you can see at least two ten-year stretches of zero gains. guess what, we're in another one now. buy-and-hold only makes sense in secular bull markets, like 1982-2000.
I meant "long term" in the sense of investors who consistently make a profit in the long term, not those who happen to hold particular equities for a long period of time.
That would be precisely the wrong metric to look at to see how a good long-term investor is: the absolute best performer in a given year is very likely to be the guy who threw darts at just the right stocks on the wall.