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It's not like we don't have various periods to look at either - from the chart I saw it looked to me like the hedge funds lost 9 out of the 10 years. So sure, you can say 'some unusual stuff happened in there' but ... 9 out of 10 years speaks for itself.

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lol i didnt even look, but yea. guess there is really no defending it. guess most of them suck at gambling. but that seems to be how these things work, a large large majority of people end up loosing when they do fantasy sports, or poker, or political futures markets, or stock picking, and the gains go to a small minority. like, even if you are better than 90% of people at one of those things, youll probably lose money.

Exactly - the headwinds in this case are strong. Even if you're just talking about actively-managed mutual funds versus passive indexes, you're talking about overcoming the 70th percentile after fees/taxes on average. So you can't just beat half the other players, and you can't just do it one time - you have to beat more like 2/3 and do it consistently over the years to overcome drag. In studies done on this, most active managers who beat the index either (a) take on a lot more risk, and/or (b) can't do it consistently and eventually fall behind.

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