Capital allocator preformance

[ragnarisapirate]

All,

 

I have been thinking on this for a few days now, and thought that I would post on here to get your thoughts...

 

All of our favorite capital allocators have had a period where they preformed like shit. Berkowitz recently, Munger towards the end of his partnership, Lampert a few years ago etc.

 

But, they all did incredibly well at the start of their careers.

 

Are there any out there that did terribly when they started? Or, did they not survive because they started out in a bad manner, which biased everyone against them. If you have 5 years of great performance, erase a lot of it for 2, convince people to stay with you, it seems like you would be golden.

 

Is this some sort of bias that we may have towards the more famous fund managers? Michael Burry is the only one that I can think of that might meet the criteria of "screwing up" for a few years, but, even he had a heck of a track record when on message boards; plus, he was one of the most "right" people on the housing bubble, so even he is probably a bad example for what I am getting at.

[dcollon]

On a relative basis, Bill Ruane did poorly for the first 5 years when he setup the Sequoia Fund for Berkshire Shareholders.  Obviously the early to mid 70's were tough, but he clearly picked up steam starting in '75.