How to become the best in the world by being slightly above average.

What Roger Federer can teach us about investing.

If you’ve been enjoying Wimbledon this week, you’ll know the feeling of watching something that looks effortless from the outside.

Watching yesterday, I was reminded of when someone shared a statistic about Roger Federer that sounded so far-fetched I had to look it up myself. 

It turned out to be completely true.

Across his entire career – 1,526 matches, 20 Grand Slam titles, and 310 weeks as world number one – Federer won only around 54% of the points he played.

Not 90%. Not 80%. Not even 70%.

Fifty-four per cent. Which means that almost half the time, he lost the point.

And yet he became arguably the greatest player the game has seen.

Why does that matter to you, as an investor? Because investing works in much the same way. It isn’t about being right every time, or picking the next big winner, or timing the perfect entry point. It’s about applying a small, sensible edge consistently over a very long period.

The temptation to chase the dramatic

When markets are noisy – and they often are – it’s natural to be drawn to the exciting story. The bold prediction. The fund manager who promises to beat the market. The “can’t miss” opportunity from the proverbial expert ‘down the pub.’

But in our experience, real long-term investment success is usually much quieter than that. It’s built through the steady accumulation of small advantages: staying disciplined when others panic, keeping costs sensible, holding a properly diversified portfolio, and resisting the urge to make emotional decisions when the news looks frightening.

None of this sounds particularly thrilling. If anything, it can feel underwhelming – which is precisely the challenge. The best investment strategies are often the ones that feel boring while they’re working.

Why small edges matter so much

The maths behind this is worth a closer look. An investment portfolio that outperforms by just one or two percentage points a year, sustained over a lifetime, can lead to a dramatically different outcome by the time it matters most. 

Not because of any brilliant prediction. Simply because small, consistent advantages compound into something much larger over time.

This is one of the reasons we build portfolios the way we do. We aren’t trying to win every quarter or call every headline correctly – that’s largely impossible, and anyone who claims otherwise is usually trying to sell you something. 

Instead, we focus on a robust, evidence-based process designed to capture long-term returns while minimising the costs and behaviours that, if ignored, could erode your wealth over the years.

The goal was never perfection. The goal is a repeatable approach that stacks the odds in your favour, year after year.

And the long-term results speak for themselves: we have outperformed over 90% of our peer group on any meaningful time horizon.

Federer’s real lesson

Federer didn’t dominate his sport because he never lost a point. He dominated because he stayed composed and consistent across thousands of matches and millions of points, trusting that the process would work itself out over time – even when any single point went against him.

Investing asks something similar of you. You don’t need to win every day, or even every year. You need a sensible process, a long enough time horizon, and the discipline to stay in the game while others lose their nerve at exactly the wrong moment.

It sounds simple. In practice, very few people manage it – which is precisely why it works for those who do.

Charles Riches

Director