Second, said Templeton, beware of your own ignorance, which is “probably an even bigger problem than emotion.… So many people buy something with the tiniest amount of information. They don’t really understand what it is that they’re buying.”

“The problem,” says Lountzis, is that qualitative factors such as adaptability or courage “are not measurable” in financial statements, which offer a quantitative record of the past.

Third, said Templeton, you should diversify broadly to protect yourself from your own fallibility.

“You need to do some independent thinking, especially about the important things, and try to work them out for yourself. Check the evidence. Check the basis of conventional beliefs.”

as Akre puts it, “We can’t dance with all the ladies.”

“Make your mistakes nonfatal,” Gundlach tells me. “It’s so fundamental to longevity. And ultimately, that’s what success is in this business: longevity.”

“It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.”

But remember: investing isn’t like Olympic diving, where the judges award extra points for difficulty.

“It’s been my experience that the richest people were those who found something good and held on to it. The people who seemed the least happy and the most frenzied and the least successful are those that are always chasing the next hot thing.”