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Picking winners among the many young companies seeking money is a tough business, even for the most sophisticated investors. Indeed, most professionally run venture funds lose money. For individuals, it's pure folly. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Your chance of winning is likely to be higher.

Most large media firms make outsized investments to acquire and market a small number of titles with strong hit potential, and bank on their sales to make up for middling performance in the rest of their catalogs.

In investing, we intuitively think we should make a number of small bets. A blockbuster strategy is the opposite. It means making fewer huge investments. But it turns out to be safer.

I've always loved to play games, and face it: investing is one big game. You need to be decisive, open-minded, flexible and competitive.

Mutual funds give people the sense that they're investing with the big boys and that they're really not at a disadvantage entering the stock market.

Many financial innovations such as the increased availability of low-cost mutual funds have improved opportunities for households to participate in asset markets and diversify their holdings.

It's no secret that big institutional investors have a lot of advantages on Wall Street. They get the first chance to buy hot initial public offerings. They get to meet in person with companies' managements.

Big money is made in the stock market by being on the right side of the major moves. The idea is to get in harmony with the market. It's suicidal to fight trends. They have a higher probability of continuing than not.

There's a lot of businesses that are working hard, who are at the top of their games. Therefore, it's always going to be a market share fight.

At the end of the day, VCs have to provide their limited partners with great returns, or they aren't going to be able to raise another fund.