Financial Planning

Active Management Hasn’t Shined in Volatile Markets

A historical analysis of active US-domiciled equity funds finds no meaningful relation between market volatility and managers’ success rates; the implication is that traditional active investments may compound your concerns during times of market uncertainty.

Singled Out: Historical Performance of Individual Stocks

  • Single stocks have a wide range of returns. Only about a fifth of stocks survive and outperform the market over 20-year periods.

  • They delist at a high rate, even those that have been around for a long time and have outperformed the market for 20 years.

  • The chance of any single stock outperforming the market in the future is not meaningfully different when conditioning on its past performance.