The great pianist Artur Rubinstein, who passed away in 1982, was once asked to judge a piano competition in London using scorecards to be marked on a scale of 1 to 20, with the best scores to receive the highest number ranking. After he listened to each competitor, Rubinstein marked his cards and submitted them.

The sponsors were astonished to see nothing but zeros and a few 20s, with no intermediary rankings whatsoever. When they demanded that the great master explain why he had judged the entrants in such an extreme manner, he replied, “Simple enough, either they can play the piano or they cannot..."

We have developed this story into an axiom we call The Rubinstein Rule, that is, that investment managers either have a demonstrable history of outperforming relevant benchmarks or they do not. Indeed, less than four of every 10 managers or funds outperforms the hurdle they intend to beat.

We invoke the “The Rubinstein Rule” when considering independent money managers to engage on behalf of our clients, hiring only those managers who are clearly the best in their fields. Otherwise, we implement our investment insights passively.