Seen correctly, active management may be the only service ever offered that costs more than the value delivered.”

That is a quote from Charles Ellis’ excellent paper on the “Mystery Of Underperformance” in the money management business. He looks at performance versus benchmarks, indices and versus the fees that are charged. His conclusions are supported by excellent empirical evidence.

“New research on the performance of institutional portfolios shows that after risk adjustment, 24% of funds fall significantly short of their chosen market benchmark and have negative alpha, 75% of funds roughly match the market and have zero alpha, and well under 1% achieve superior results after costs—a number not statistically significantly different from zero.”

He addresses the growing disconnect between management fees and performance.

“For active management, true fees—incremental fees as a percentage of incremental added value—are more than 50% of the value delivered by the more successful active managers and are far higher, even infinitely higher, for the many less successful active managers.

Here’s why: The real marginal cost of active management is the incremental fee that active managers charge versus the incremental returns they deliver.”

And Mr. Ellis goes on to identify the culprits. He reviews the practices and habits of Investment Consultants, Investment Committees, Fund Executives as well as the managers. And he finds them all guilty.

“Evidence increasingly shows that a “crime” of extensive underperformance has been committed in mutual funds, pension funds, and endowments. … an investigation leads to a surprising, if inevitable, conclusion: The usual suspects—investment managers, fund executives, investment consultants, and investment committees—are all guilty.”

The one thing he does not do is explain how to help prevent investors from becoming victims.

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