@llljb, you have it exactly right. BTW, I had to correct the numbers in my previous post from a bug in my earlier script that didn't calculate the percentages correctly, so YAFFX comes out second best below SMVLX in the average but your conclusion is correct.
As I mentioned in the first post, an average is just half the story. It is easily affected by outlier values, hence the distribution is important. I didn't put all the numbers in this post so people's eyes wouldn't glaze over.
The only difference between an A grade and an E is the rarity of that outperformance while both have good average expected values. Most investment periods in YAFFX history over last 8 years wouldn't benefit from the small period in which it outperformed.
To give some concrete numbers, while YAFFX had an expected average outperformance of 12%+ over 5yr periods, the median was actually -12%+. So half the periods not only saw negative alpha but also by a significant amount.
In terms of percentile, 0 or getting the same returns as an index happened at 57 percentile so if investors had invested spread uniformly across those 8 years, 57% of those investors would have seen negative alpha after 5 years in the fund. Hence the term lottery ticket for this grade and lower than a B which would have a lower alpha expected average but majority of people would at least see a positive alpha if not the maximum. Mainly because YAFFX outperformance was in such a narrow period. This is what gets hidden in cumulative calendar year returns listed everywhere.
In contrast, SMVLX had a long enough outperformance periods that any 5 yr period in its history would have enough overlap with an outperformance period to enjoy positive alpha. 0 is at 0 percentile for 5yr returns. So, investing on ANY day in the last 8 years would have given you a positive alpha between zero and the best, so even with worst luck in timing, you would not have suffered relative to the index and may have enjoyed respectable positive alpha. Hence the highest grade.
What is surprising to me is how poorly highly rated T Rowe Price funds in this category have done in this metric. Haven't looked at them closely yet to see what the explanation might be.

I'm not fond of Fidelity's latest website, but then again, I've found each iteration worse than the one before. Anyone remember their old color scheme (years ago)? To me it had a more attractive shade of green.
Some of the changes they've made over time have been gratuitous, others designed to organize more and more types of information and transactions, while the most recent changes have been in part to offer a common mobile/desktop presentation. In doing so, IMHO they dumbed down (er, "simplified") the pages.
This is an instance of a design quandary that's been around for decades - do you design an application to look uniform across platforms, or do you design an application to follow conventions on each platform (and thus look different on each)? As you might infer from the paragraph above, I think Fidelity made the wrong choice in this case.
All that said, their current website is (again IMHO) much better than it was when they first deployed it for feedback. I stopped even looking at the first cut, I found it that unusable. This final iteration of their current design is much more usable than that initial pass.
Regarding clicks - the IBD metric for site performance (just one of 12 different factors going into the overall scoring) is described as considering three subfactors - speed, reliability, and clicks. So already we're down to a weighting of about 3% for number of clicks needed. The text talks about clicks for trading stocks. For that, Fidelity seems about as efficient as possible. Ckick on trade, get a dialog box (no moving off current page), input the trade info (you'll get a quote in the dialog box, no clicks needed), and away you go.
On the other hand, activities I care about, like bill pay, have gotten harder to accomplish. You used to be able to indicate that you wanted bill pay for a particular account and get there in one click. Now you have to go to a bill pay page, indicate which account you want to use, and finally land on the right page. Getting quotes (without using the trade dialog box) seems impossible. If you enter a ticker in the search box (which says "search or get a quote"), it brings up the research page. No current price to be found anywhere.
The bottom line is that some perceived problems have to do with lack of familiarity, some with a less than ideal design, and some with the particular tasks one cares about (which is why any particular review, like IBD, may think more highly or less highly of a site than you do).

Updated Feb 9 with SCG grading
A follow up from my earlier preliminary study that I have named Rolling Alpha Returns Exposé (tm) RARE analysis of mutual funds to identify if mutual fund returns are sensitive to when an investor holds them (more sensitive they are, less likely most investors would have realized the fund's best returns even if they held it for a long time).
Having finished the remaining programming to find the distribution of returns, I am presenting a grading system for mutual funds using the following grades. Selected funds with at least 8 years of history from The Great Owls and the top 20-30 ranked funds at US News Fund ratings. They show significant differences in the sensitivity to time periods.
The grading scale:
A - Over-achievers : Significant alpha over index returns (1% or more per year) and for most investment periods regardless of which 3 or 5 yr period you pick in the last 8 years. So most investors would have seen that performance.
B - Steady achievers : Respectable alpha over index returns (0.5 to 1% per year) for most investment periods
C - Closet indexers : No statististically significant difference from index returns for most investment periods.
D - Pretenders : While some cherry picked returns look good, less than index returns for most investment periods
E - Lottery tickets : Significant alpha for specific periods but underperformance for most investment periods
F - Failures : Statistically significant under performance for most investment periods
X - Toxic : Very poor returns relative to index for most investment periods except for an insignificant percentage of intervals so unless investors caught that interval would have suffered significantly relative to the index
Selected funds can be index funds themselves but using a different index or a narrower index than the sector index but measuring themselves againt it.
Grades for selected funds:
(*) indicates Great Owl Funds
Large Cap Core/Blend US Domestic Funds
A+
SMVLX
A
JENHX(*), VSBPX
A-
VSLPX
B+
VITPX
B
POSKX(*), AWEIX(*), VTCIX, NMIAX
B-
JPDEX
C+
NOPRX(*), DTMEX
C
FLCEX, VQNPX, VPMIX
C-
PRBLX
E
YAFFX
F+
GLDLX(*)
F
PRDGX(*), TRISX(*), PRCOX
F-
WMLIX
X
CAPEX, SLCAX, SCPAX
Large Cap Value US Domestic Funds
A+
FDSAX(*), DFLVX, DPDEX, BRLVX
A
NOLCX, BPAIX, DDVIX(*), TRVLX, VWNDX, LSVEX
A-
VUVLX
B+
VEIPX, DODGX
B
MPISX, EVSAX
B-
TILCX, HOVLX
C+
FLVEX
C
TFFYX(*), DIVIX
D
EQTIX
F+
LCEAX, ILVAX
F
MEIAX
X
FBCVX
Comments on LCV funds in the post below.
Large Cap Growth US Domestic funds
A+
FDGRX, NICSX, GTLLX
A
TRBCX, TPLGX, TRLGX, FBGRX
A-
PLGIX, FNCMX, JIBCX
B+
PRGFX, PARNX
B
POGRX, VHCOX, RDLIX(*)
C+
TILGX, FDSVX, TLIIX,TILIX
C
VPMCX, FLGEX
C-
EGFIX(*)
D
JICPX, HACAX
D-
BRLGX, VWUSX
F+
MMDEX(*)
X
FCNTX, PRGIX
Comments on the LCG fund grading in my comment below
Small Cap Growth US equity funds
A+
PRNHX, DCGTX
A
PRDSX, HSPGX, BCSIX, RSEGX, TRSSX, JGMAX, WFSAX, JANIX
A-
PPCAX
B+
OTCFX
B-
WGROX, LSSIX
C+
TSCIX
C
PLWAX
C-
HASGX, GWETX
D+
WAMVX
D
DTSGX, FCAGX
F
CCASX, QASGX
F-
TISEX, GSXAX, SGPIX, TSGUX
X
BRSGX, MPSSX, TCMSX
PS: I do realize it is egg on my face for criticizing SMVLX and starting this analysis to prove my hunch while it came out on top of all the other funds. Sometimes intuitions can be wrong and hence the need for analysis. This is why startups pivot when intuitions about their markets aren't supported in numbers later on. Shows I didn't design the analysis to prove my hunch as can be easily done with statistics!
It appears that this analysis could be applied between any two similar funds to decide which one is less likely to disappoint if you weren't lucky enough to be in it for its best periods. This can be ONE fund selection criterion say for example if you wanted to choose between POSKX and VTCIX. This would help even more when there is no good index to compare a fund to like allocation funds or multi sector funds. More of such results later.

@Crash
I don't think we are in for the 1930s right away. My way of thinking is what I have posted in the past we are in a sea change that people are not talking about - free trade, population growth, robotics, free movement of money and movement of mfg to lower cost areas causing deflation and hardship for worker.
So, I'm expecting a slow grind - years.
I don't the EU will change but they can show us what to expect a VAT to deal with the debt (for awhile) and social programs.

I have to assume he was just showing only funds that start with A - C because it looks like Vanguard Dividend Growth VDIGX beat those listed and also the S + P for 3, 5 and 10 years. Its been my choice as largest fund holding a while now, with additional money waiting on sidelines for a bit lower level.

Tradeking supposedly charges $9.95 to buy a no-load fund, and another $9.95 to sell one, regardless of the holding period. I contacted them a few years ago and was told that they charge no short-term redemption fees other than what an individual fund might charge for short-term trading. I've read that they offer 8000 funds. I've never bought or sold a fund through them, so can't vouch for their reliability. Their website seems to be down today, so maybe trying to trade funds through them would be a headache.

I think Scottrade is just coming more in line with its rivals. Tradeking is too obscure for my tastes. Just today and yesterday I paid out $160 more in fees to Scottrade than I would have prior to 2/1. In the good old days you could buy and sell funds with no fees whatsoever no matter how short your holding period. I had to adjust when they changed the rules to short term fees and will have to adjust again now that these fees have been raised.

Tradeking supposedly charges $9.95 to buy a no-load fund, and another $9.95 to sell one, regardless of the holding period. I contacted them a few years ago and was told that they charge no short-term redemption fees other than what an individual fund might charge for short-term trading. I've read that they offer 8000 funds. I've never bought or sold a fund through them, so can't vouch for their reliability. Their website seems to be down today, so maybe trying to trade funds through them would be a headache.

FYI: Dividend funds have underperformed the S&P 500 over the past 10 years after outperforming through the first seven years of the 10.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/mutual-funds/can-dividend-funds-get-their-mojo-back/

Vanguard Brokerage Services, like Fidelity, also imposes a $50 short term redemption fee for NTF shares sold within 60 days. There are some brokerages that do not add their own short term redemption fee to any that the fund might impose. When I posted on this three years ago, WellsTrade didn't add any short term fee of its own.
This may be obvious, but you can avoid all brokerage fees by buying funds directly.
You won't get access to institutional class funds that way (brokerages often reduce the min required), but if you're looking at short term positions, the 25 basis point difference between retail and institutional class shares won't add much to your costs.
Check into the fund family's wire fees - they're likely less than the broker would charge for a short term redemption, and wiring should give you access to the cash just as fast as selling at a brokerage. For example, DoubleLine's wire fee is $15 - less even than Scottrade's old $17 short term redemption fee.

We had an earlier discussion on PTIAX, where I said I'd contact the fund and get back on some of the details about the portfolio. I was finally able to speak at some length with one of the analysts, so here's the Cliff Notes version.
* Credit quality: The munis are basically A, with only a few BBBs and nothing below investment grade. For the mostly non-agency mortgages, it's the same thing Gundlach always says: credit ratings alone aren't very helpful for evaluating older, higher-yielding mortgages, since there haven't been any revisions since the typical downgrades of the financial crisis era. PTIAX invests only in prime and Alt-A, no subprime, so the credit quality of their holdings is comparatively good for the asset class.
* Duration: The munis fall in ~ the 7-8y range, and the mortgages (on paper, by the usual calculation) are ~ 4-5. (But see the 'graf below on their take on using duration as a metric.)
* Strategy: As is pretty obvious by the holdings, it's a strategy that attempts to balance risks. On the rate-sensitive side of the scale, as tax-exempt munis have moved into historical fair value range (based on the spread to Treasuries), they've moved some of that part of the portfolio to taxable munis, which they regard as still a decent value. They've also added a single-digit stake in IG corporates, but are going slow in that department and still regard IG corps as peripheral to the strategy.
* Duration and their process: they regard duration as interesting but not definitive, not in their top tier of evaluation metrics. For example, the mortgages they use in the portfolio, on paper ~ a duration of 4-5, typically don't move much if any when there's a rate bump. Their process, "Shape Management," starts with rate and credit-based analysis, but the critical piece is "a forward projection of a fixed-income security’s total return characteristics over a variety of interest rate scenarios, yield curve shifts, and time horizons." (The "shape" is the shape of returns under different scenarios.)
Thus endeth the dissertation. These guys are still very helpful; the delay in responding was apparently due to the ramping-up of the operation that's going on now.
Best, AJ
Edit to add: To clarify on the non-agency mortgages, they're what show on, say, the M* portfolio page as the below-IG part of the portfolio, based on the ratings of years ago, which the PTIAX folks think aren't very accurate today.

@lljb, thanks for the site suggestion. I explored it and the manual process on M* as well where you can enter start and end dates. But it is too laborious for the number of runs needed. If I had the raw data, I could probably write a script in less than an hour to do it but don't have any access to raw pricing data from multiple years and with corrections for distributions.
@expatsp, given that all market sectors go through cycles, one could have pretty much have an opinion on any combination of sectors as the place to be and they will be proved right some time. But what does that do to the investor portfolios meanwhile? Hussman is still waiting for his bear market to make money he has been losing. How can a retail investor evaluate whether a strategy will pay off or not? If they did, they wouldn't need a professional manager!
In baseball terms, it is the difference between a hitter that looks for a specific ball to hit and strikes out if he doesn't get it and one who takes the balls as they come and manufactures hits. I would much prefer my fund manager to be of the latter type even though the former might hit one out of the ball park much more dramatically when he gets the ball he is looking for and prepared for. The team might lose while he is waiting for it.

I remember reading some opinion pieces Smead posted (on Seeking Alpha, I think) soon after he opened the fund in 2008, and he made what at the time was a bold call: commodities were a poor investment and the U.S. consumer was going to bounce back. He invested appropriately (consumer cyclical, finance, and health are over 90% of his portfolio) and outperformed as a result, though it took a couple of years for him to be proven right.
Whether or not he was brilliant or lucky in making that big call I don't know (and I don't own the fund) but that big call explains both his early underperformance and subsequent recovery.
Which makes me think that there's no metric out there which can substitute paying attention to a manager's strategy. You all know what Mark Twain said about statistics, I'm sure...

@lljb, you are right. My first reading of those slides was wrong. He was badmouthing the critics not Bill Miller by quoting the badmouthing of Bill Miller by the critics. So, I take that part back and apologies to Mr. Smead for that mischaracterization.
The critics weren't doing anything other than echoing the sentiments of the passive indexing over active indexing crowd that saw the fall of Bill Miller as validation of their long-held views. I don't see this is necessarily foolish because there are good reasons for criticizing the performance of active managers as a whole.
Ironically, his argument against the criticism relies on the same calendar year metric that I show above can hide the performance real investors may see in the funds relative to the index.
Just to note, I am not doing an indexing vs active argument here. My point is that bad metrics make it difficult to select good active funds that may exist from bad/lucky ones.
Here is an idea for the site owners since they seem to have the data and the computing capability.
What if you computed a metric that calculated the 1yr, 3yr, 5yr returns as an average and variance to the index over multiple runs of the fund each with a single purchase at the beginning of each month since inception and held for that period of time? Right now, the metrics say what happens if investors purchase only at the beginning of the year which is very artificial and subject to gaming by fund managers.
Wouldn't this be a more valid indicator of what an investor coming across a fund and purchasing without paying attention to the calendar can expect from the fund? This would make explicit any destructive effect of the fund's volatility if they tend to be volatile and can burn investors. Would the great owls be still be great owls using this metric? If a fund had a long and distributed poor performance periods with some lucky short spikes then this would expose the destructive power of such underperformance even if the fund managed a tiny gain in enough years from such spikes to look great in current metrics.
The second metric would be adding a fixed investment every month for each run above as might happen in a retirement fund or a disciplined investing plan. This is for investors in the accumulation phase. The complement would be withdrawing a fixed amount each month during that run.
Isn't it worth doing this experiment if the current metrics have the potential of misleading investors setting false expectations of what a fund is likely to do even when future performance mimics past performance? Is it feasible or such metrics already available?

First, I would be turned off by the lead manager. He seems to have a habit of badmouthing. Foolish this and that. But the showstopper would have been the way he tore into Bill Miller in this presentation.

Maybe I missed the point during the call so I'm sorry if that's the case, but I didn't hear him tear into Bill Miller at all. My take on what he was saying was that Miller was an incredible guy, outperforming for 15 straight years and as soon as he didn't all the critics came out of the woodwork. But he showed Miller's performance after the criticism and he was back at the top, hence I took his comments to suggest those who criticized were "Foolish Critics", the title of the presentation. He was making the same argument about Buffett- that people are criticizing him for recent performance but Smead thinks they have it wrong.
Just for the sake of transparency I don't own Smead's fund but I do pay attention to him and his fund because I think he has some reasonably good ideas about the future, mostly related to the impact millennials will have.

FYI: It wasn’t that long ago that many were calling an end to the out-performance that has persisted for years in the Vanguard Wellesley Income Fund (VWIAX[1]) in light of rising interest rate concerns. After all, how could a fund shackled by a prospectus rule to hold an abundance of fixed-income ever outperform high yield strategies near the low end of an interest rate cycle?
It just goes to show that there is no replacement for common sense asset management during a difficult year in the market. As a result of their expertise, the $40 billion juggernaut VWIAX was recently named Morningstar’s Top Allocation fund for 2015[2].
Regards,
Ted
http://investorplace.com/2016/01/vanguard-wellesley-income-fund-shines-on/print
M* Snapshot VWINX: (Investor Shares)
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/VWINX/quote.html
Lipper Snapshot VWINX:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/VWINX?countrycode=US
VWINX Is Rank #5 In The (CA) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/conservative-allocation/vanguard-wellesley®-income-fund/vwinx

@rjb112, the quick-glance metric you have pointed out is a good example of why the performance metrics as published can be misleading (and why managers try to game the numbers each calendar year). Investors don't always invest by calendar years. And barely beating the index one year isn't much of a comfort to an investor if you have lost much more the previous period.
For example,
The 11 month performance in 2008 is missing in that table and was a bad one for the fund losing about 42%+ of its value compared to the approx 36%+ loss for S&P 500 in the same period. It is the bounce back from this deep loss that it managed to recover some in 2009 so 2009 by itself looks as if it beat the market but investors who invested with the fund in 2008 were still under water relative to S&P 500. Trailed index again in 2010 and didn't even make back all of that trailing deficit in 2011 although it looks like it beat the index that calendar year in your table. In fact, the people who started with the fund or soon after didn't see anything over the S&P 500 up until that one good run in 2012-2013 more than 4 years later.
The one continuous period I mentioned from mid 2012 to mid 2013 is what makes the 2012 and 2013 calendar years look good. 2014 and 2015 are index hugging years for all practical purposes. If you look closer at 2014 unless you were invested in the first three months of 2014, your portfolio would have trailed the index even in that year.
If you had invested in 2013 after its one good run ended (still in a rising bull market) you would be trailing the S&P 500 again todate.
All this shows is that except for that one good run, the fund is just more volatile than the index and when you have such a fund, real investor returns suffer unless you were lucky to time the few entry and exit points correctly. It seems to give back all the advantage in down markets. I do not want to confuse this with the IRR values computed by M* and blaming it on bad trading by investors. The point I am trying to make applies to all investors that just invest and hold but aren't lucky in when they enter/exit this fund to make the fund worth it. Even holding for a long period may not help in such a fund if you weren't in it for its one good relatively short run.
My point is that this is why many investors think they have chosen a good fund because all published metrics look good and yet may see that their returns are nothing to justify the high fees such funds charge. This has certainly been my experience in selecting funds based only on such easy to digest tables and metrics ratings even when it has a boatload of numbers as available on this site.
Better metrics can perhaps be designed that try to make the performance metrics as insensitive as possible to when the investment began or ended perhaps by aggregating over a large number of random periods or some model of typical disciplined investor behavior such as monthly deposits/withdrawals each month. Also perhaps metrics that try to detect such continuous good runs and compare relative to other periods to see whether the fund is a one hit wonder or is regularly outperforming even if it has down years. I would chose a fund to buy and hold that did well in the latter even if it didn't beat the index in every calendar year which is a very artificial construct that fund managers try to game to look good to gather assets.

"Then I took a look at the fund performance. It is a classic index hugger.....and a poor one at that and would have done poorly if it wasn't for one period between June 2012 and August 2013. That time frame with a reasonably well defined start and end suggests the fund had one or two positions that over performed. Typical stock momentum for high flying stocks last about that much time. If the fund didn't have that, it would look bad relative to S&P 500. In fact, almost all of the good metrics for the fund can be traced to that period.

If you had bought into that fund after that period, for most such buys you might have experienced index hugging or worse performance. For the 4.5 years before that period, the fund had lagged the S&P. Now you can see why such blind metrics can be really misleading
"fund that didn't have such a one-hit wonder quality to it"
take a look at the calendar year performance since inception.
It beat the market and its category in 6 out of the 7 years.
A pretty consistent outperformance rather than just a single period of 14 months

Cheers

I find no compelling reason to invest in this fund even if it was open.
I hope this post is not a faux pas as it might be construed as a criticism of the fund profiling and metrics done on this site. But that is not the intent. I have been frustrated quite often by selecting funds based on the usual Lipper, MorningStar, etc as they looked great on paper and came highly recommended but never delivered for my investment.. So this applies to all of such fund evaluation techniques.
I am thinking that by looking at the metrics above and the fund profiling linked above, that this is a fund that would be seen favorably here. I realize that "past performance is no predictor of future performance" is the explanation when that does not work as expected but I think that is just CYA. One could say the same thing about any metric including those that had zero correlation with anything that happened in the future. So one has to look at the performance/validity of the metric itself.
I have never considered this fund before but would never have chosen this fund looking at the performance a little more carefully than what is blindly captured by metrics and the accompanying presentation.
It looks great on paper with a positive 5yr alpha over S&P 500. But I am sure everyone has had experience with funds that looked great and yet their returns when invested were very disappointing. People chalk it up to that "past performance ..." thing but I would believe that a fund like this one could be positively predicted to disappoint more investors than not in the future compared to say just a S&P 500 fund/etf by underperforming relative to that benchmark.
First, I would be turned off by the lead manager. He seems to have a habit of badmouthing. Foolish this and that. But the showstopper would have been the way he tore into Bill Miller in this presentation. I don't know Bill Miller personally nor have I invested in his fund. In my career where I have to evaluate the future performance of people very often and with not a lot of information, people who use a lot of time to badmouth others very seldom deliver. It shows a lack of class here which some people might not care about but to me it also shows a lack of judgment because that whole section looks personal. A manager that gets that personal or emotional will make judgment mistakes. It was highly unnecessary to do so against a peer/competitor and moreover does not imply he can do better himself in his own style. I expect the culture he will set in his company with that attitude will also be toxic. Even in the brief profile done on this site, he cannot help himself criticizing to toot his own horn.
The presentation goes on and on about Brk.B. Why would that make the fund look good? There are any number of funds you can buy to get Brk.B exposure. Or is it to make the fund look good by association?
Then I took a look at the fund performance. It is a classic index hugger with high 1.25% ER and a poor one at that and would have done poorly if it wasn't for one period between June 2012 and August 2013. That time frame with a reasonably well defined start and end suggests the fund had one or two positions that overperformed. Typical stock momentum for high flying stocks last about that much time. If the fund didn't have that, it would look bad relative to S&P 500. In fact, almost all of the good metrics for the fund can be traced to that period.
If you had bought into that fund after that period, for most such buys you might have experienced index hugging or worse performance. For the 4.5 years before that period, the fund had lagged the S&P. Now you can see why such blind metrics can be really misleading. Not because of "past performance..." caveat but the actual past performance characteristics of the fund that might hint at a high probability of underperformance gets hidden in the statistical measures and ratings.
What exactly is fhe reason to invest in a fund like this rather than the index itself or some other large blend style fund that didn't have such a one-hit wonder quality to it and didn't risk underperformance with a huge ER?

Hi expatsp:
I manage, or mismanage, retirement accounts for 2 kids and their spouses. Bought FAIRX maybe 10 years ago, sold maybe 5 years ago. Why? The 'star' manager phenom. Some of those 'kids' are more attuned than others, but none of them have the level of cynicism I do. I like the team managed stuff, thinking that there might be some continuity over the coming years. I use two you mentioned: Primecap and Dodge & Cox. Tweedy Browne Global has been in their ports for years as well, although I think their ER stinks: they don't trade an awful lot and won't buy anywhere they can't drink the water - so whats the deal with 1.40 ER?
Am taking antacids over Sequoia: thought I had a good one there. We'll see if they can right the ship.
Matthews MACSX requires monitoring now - I have been neglectful of their management changes. Artisan ARTGX can stay for a while and we'll see. Bridgeway B
ridgeway is another concern of

It looks like per M* data, procrastination is hurting you. FAIRX is down about -11% for the month (FAAFX slightly worst), compared to the S&P 500 down about -5%.
In hind sight, it appears that Berkowitz does not fit the definition of a great active manager. Over the last 10 years he has under performed the S&P by almost 3% a year on average. In the last 5 years he has under performed by an astonishing 12% a year.
So, are the chances Berkowitz some how turns things around better than switching to an index or a more stable manager?