I did mean hedge funds. A few points: 1) it is really odd to be citing David Swensen in support of the viewpoint that nobody, not even hedge funds can beat the market, because a) he is famous because of having put together a track record of beating the market over a long period and b) he is also famous because he achieved this by having a 26% allocation of the Yale endowment to hedge funds.
2) we need to be very clear about comparing apples to apples, because a lot of these comparisons are actually quite poorly thought out. You cannot compare mutual funds to "buy and hold", because the point of a mutual fund is that it is a liquid investment vehicle which allows you to add or subtract money on any given day, whereas "buy and hold" by definition doesn't. Liquidity is very useful and quite expensive to provide, which is why it costs money. Some of that cost is seen in the management fee, but some of it is seen in underperformance - the behavioural facts about mutual fund inflows and outflows mean that mutual funds are more or less forced to buy at the top and sell at the bottom because of the behaviour of the underlying investors. Dividends also matter a hell of a lot - lots of these comparisons ignore them 3) having said that, the Vanguard fund Doug mentioned is a valid comparison and its performance is good. But here we are talking about like the Warren Buffet of index funds, the George Soros of index funds. Lots and lots of index funds have *terrible* performance - they build up negative tracking error over a period of time, and then they are quietly withdrawn out of embarrassment. This is for the reason alluded to above; because they are funds, not conceptual "buy and hold" portfolios, they have to trade, all the time, to meet inflows and outflows. The commission and slippage on these trades will usually tear you apart, let alone the expense of simply managing all the accounts. Vanguard needs to generate a lot of steady outperformance just to break even, and the fact that it has done this is testament to extremely good performance by its traders (some of the smartest academics in quantitative finance are consultants to Vanguard). It certainly doesn't mean that index funds are a no-brainer. Will Vanguard continue to be a really great tracker fund? I think they will, but I haven't committed myself to not believing that track records matter. If anyone really thinks that all these track records are so much noise, they should be worried about Vanguard too. 4) most average dudes probably can't call the market or pick stocks. most average dudes couldn't set up an industrial company and make profits out of that either. doesn't mean that there's no such thing or it's not worth having as part of your economic worldview. we know that a lot of investment banks systematically make money out of securities trading. take one of those trading desks and call it a hedge fund and you shouldn't be surprised if it also makes money. Lots of hedge funds don't work and go under, but lots of companies of any kind also don't work and go under. Lots do work and don't go under. basically, this isn't the personal finance discussion list and anyone wanting retirement savings advice is on their own as far as I'm concerned. But I don't think it makes sense to ignore the existence of the fund industry or to assume that it's all built on fibs. It isn't. best dd -----Original Message----- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: 11 September 2007 02:52 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Hedge Fund Clones On Sep 10, 2007, at 9:40 PM, raghu wrote: > I think DD meant "there are plenty of *index* funds out there which do > a really excellent job". No, I think he meant hedge funds. Vanguard's S&P 500 fund does an excellent job. This is an excerpt from a NYT piece by Yale's former investment manager, David Swensen, who really knows what he's talking about: hedge fund investor, further reducing chances for success.
