"Van Vliet and de Koning responded by referring to the fable of the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise is expected to lose the race to the much faster hare. Nevertheless, the tortoise does race, moving slowly and steadily. The hare dashes out ahead of the tortoise, confident it will win easily. It’s so confident it takes a nap and ends up being beaten by the tortoise. That’s the paradox at the core of this book, that a low-risk portfolio beats a high-risk portfolio because it is slow and steady. It never races ahead, but it can recover from market declines more quickly than the high-risk portfolio. Consider just the S&P 500’s loss of 38.5% in 2008. Both high-risk and low-risk portfolios had to recover, and while the authors don’t provide the amounts of the losses in that year, we can be quite sure that the high-risk stocks had a much steeper path to recovery.."
