Currently beating VTI by 22% YTD.

I just checked – VTI down about 12% YTD. My brokerage is up over 10%. I'm beating VTI by 22% YTD.

I know that this is a long-term game, but the people who told me “always a great time to buy index funds”, well I think there's something to be said for clever stock picking and value investing.

I'm well aware that I may underperform the the indices in the future, but the notion that “index funds, always, no questions asked” seems wrong to me, especially given how inflated everything became with monetary policy. Again, I may underperform in the future, I'm just happy to see that I was correct in thinking that indices were a little hot and individual stocks might be a better bet.