The Wall Street bullies have lead us to believe that there is someone out there who can predict the future. This belief is the main cause for poor performance by investors. Your financial future is at stake. Granted some will get lucky but the vast majority will suffer.

The perpetuation of the myth that you can pick outperforming actively managed funds through “research” is a cruel hoax. It makes ordinary investors feel inadequate when their efforts fail. Most don’t realize that extraordinary resources by researchers with advanced degrees in finance have been devoted to finding the magic bullet that would “beat the markets.” None have succeeded.The fruitless search for predictive factors of outperforming funds is harmful to your financial health. In a recent blog on Forbes, Richard Ferri calculated the probability of selecting a winning actively managed fund for different categories of stocks and bonds ranged from a low of 22 percent to a high of 32 percent.

Most investors hold a portfolio of mutual funds, and not just a single fund. Ferri reached some startling conclusions about the probability of a portfolio of all actively managed funds beating a comparable portfolio of all index funds. This statistic stood out: An actively managed portfolio consisting of five funds held for 20 years had only a 2 percent chance of beating a comparable portfolio of index funds. Ferri concludes that “[T]he evidence in favor of all index funds, all of the time, is irrefutable, overwhelming and important to all investors.”

Don’t be misled by statements indicating there is some way you can identify actively managed funds that will outperform their benchmarks prospectively. As one commentator noted, relying on past performance and hoping it will persist is “like driving forward while looking through the rear view mirror.”

Trying to pick active managers that ‘beat’ the market is gambling and speculating with your money. Don’t do it.

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