Doomsayers and market prophets

Prophets of doom

2018 has been another hard year for prophets of doom. Even though some markets have suffered minor corrections (and there are still four months to go!), in most cases broad-market indices in first-world nations are either up or not far from their levels in January. Here are some recent doomsday predictions (note that the author of the blog or article is not always the one making the prediction):

2015

[1 Mar 2015] Stock-market crash of 2016: The countdown begins [17 May 2015] Countdown to the stock-market Crash of 2016 is ticking louder [1 Jul 2015] Recession time

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Mutual fund performance and survivorship bias

Mutual fund performance

As we have noted in previous Mathematical Investor blogs (see this blog for instance), surprisingly few mutual funds beat their respective benchmark (typically some market index). Even fewer consistently beat their benchmark year after year.

A new report from S&P Dow Jones sheds light on this phenomenon. It tabulates, for each year from 2001 through 2017, the percentage of mutual funds in various categories that are out-performed by their respective benchmarks. Here is a brief summary of this performance data.

Table 1: Percentages of U.S. mutual funds beaten by their benchmark

Category Benchmark 2011 2012 2013 2014

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