"Beating the market is not a financial goal" →

Enjoyed this post by Cullen Roche on the viability of value investing after a four year spell of the strategy failing to beat the market:

“I am not a big fan of “alpha” chasing strategies for a simple reason – beating the market is not a financial goal. Yeah, it would be great to do it, but no prudent financial planner looks at a financial plan and says, “our main goal is to beat the market”. No, your goal is to generate a certain return while taking a certain degree of risk so that you have a high probability of having a certain amount of money when you actually need it. If the stock market does 10% per year and you only achieve 6% of that return, but you do it while taking far less risk and beating your required 4% return needs then you certainly did not fail. You didn’t beat the market, but you met your own financial goals.”