I saw a tweet about a Fidelity manager I’d never heard of running a “disruptor” fund, similar in concept to Cathie Wood’s ARK. These funds often seem better at building a brand than beating the market. This one caught my attention for the opposite reason:

“Mark Schmehl’s Fidelity Global Innovators Class returned 50.14% through September of this year and 25.68% annualized since its November 2017 inception. Those are the Series B Canadian-dollar returns, with roughly C$36 billion in assets across the fund’s series.” – Q Cap on X

There’s a huge disconnect between who gets our attention and whose results deserve it. You can spend all day listening to someone barely beating the market and never hear about someone putting up numbers like these.

My view on this is simple: the more you share about your positions publicly, the more you’re turning your cards over for others to see. Those who outperform in silence never get their cards analyzed, exposed, vetted or challenged quite like the investor in silence, undistracted by publicity, and quietly focusing on returns and not noise.

For example, I also just recently saw Cathie Wood’s response to someone at Robinhood’s summit who questioned ARK’s performance relative to QQQ.

Her explanation was that the portfolios are built differently. QQQ tracks the Nasdaq-100, while ARK actively invests in companies it believes are driving disruptive innovation across industries. She also explicitly acknowledged that a different mandate doesn’t remove accountability for performance.

But as an investor and observer, I’m still thinking about the contrast between the brand power of one fund (Cathie’s) that’s underperforming and the silence of another (Schmel’s) that is producing jaw-dropping returns.

What interests me most is the burden that comes with being such a public investor. Every position becomes something people can question. Every change invites interpretation. Every stretch of underperformance becomes a public debate about your entire worldview.

Once you’ve publicly declared that a stock is the opportunity of a lifetime, changing your mind becomes more complicated. You have an audience. You have people who agreed with you. Some of them may have bought because of what you said.

Now selling comes with an explanation. You can be completely finished with a trade financially and still feel attached to it socially. That seems like a terrible position to put yourself in.

There’s something incredibly valuable about being able to change your mind quietly. To go a week without having a strong opinion worth sharing. To move with speed or patience without any social media burdens whatsoever.

Sometimes it’s worth keeping your cards face down and executing in silence.