In our index card book, Helaine Olen and I recommend that ordinary investors stick to low-fee index funds-and thus avoid actively-managed mutual funds. Here’s more evidence. In this comparison, only 4.1% of actively-managed funds beat a simple Vanguard index fund over a ten-year period through October 31, 2015. It’s not complicated. It’s just too bad millions of ordinary investors are paying billions of dollars in fees to under-performing investment products.



Study finds only 4.1% of funds beat relevant index over last 10 yrs. #passiveinvesting https://t.co/2f5uifnu0H pic.twitter.com/WBxxIhAEkb

— Rob Wherry (@RobWherry) February 1, 2016

PS: If professional money managers can’t beat a simple market index, you probably can’t either. So avoid picking individual stocks or other speculative efforts like that. Use your brainpower on your day job, and to be good to people close to you.