Make the numbers…

Warren Buffet, quoted by Peter Bevelin in A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers:

Watch out for managers who seduce me with fancy predictions.

A few of this managers will prove prophetic–but others will turn out to be congenial optimists, or even charlatans. Unfortunately, it’s not easy for investors to know in advance which species they are dealing with.

(…)

Managers that always promise to “make the numbers” will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.