You can’t beat the market consistently with stock picking – so why does stock picking seem to still dominate vs asset allocation?


I was reading this book “Just keep buying” by Nick Maggiulli and there is a data point in there that made me pause:

“Just 4% of stocks from 1926 – 2016 created all the excess return for stocks above U.S. treasury bills. Can you be sure you can find the one of these 4% of stocks and not pick one of the 96%?” Source here

Add the fact that most mutual fund managers/teams, that focus on actively picking stocks for their career, can't seem to consistently beat or even match their respective passive indices/benchmarks (especially after fees).

Why do people (myself included) continue to try and do stock picking like we could be one of the few Warren B's that can identify the 4%?


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