Top 7 Quotes & Sayings by Cliff Asness

Making mountains out of molehills sells more books than a study of molehills.

The term bubble should indicate a price that no reasonable future outcome can justify.

Market-cap based indexing will never be driven from its deserved perch as core and deserved king of the investment world. It is what we should all own in theory and it has delivered low-cost equity returns to a great mass of investors... the now and forever king-of-the-hill.

Hedge funds are investment pools that are relatively unconstrained in what they do. They are relatively unregulated (for now), charge very high fees, will not necessarily give you your money back when you want it, and will generally not tell you what they do. They are supposed to make money all the time, and when they fail at this, their investors redeem and go to someone else who has recently been making money. Every three or four years they deliver a one-in-a-hundred year flood. They are generally run for rich people in Geneva, Switzerland, by rich people in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The president's attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it a labor union that delivers money and votes for him.... Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and the abuse of power.

You’ve got to guess at worst cases: No model will tell you that. My rule of thumb is double the worst that you have ever seen.

Listing rights generally involves enumerating things you may do without interference (the right to free speech) or may not be done to you without your permission (illegal search and seizure, loud boy-band music in public places). They are protections, not gifts of material goods. Material goods and services must be taken from others, or provided by their labor, so if you believe you have an absolute right to them, and others don't choose to provide it to you, you then have a 'right' to steal from them. But what about their far more fundamental right not to be robbed?