This weekend's Sydney Morning Herald, in the 'Investing' section has a column entitled 'Monitor' by John Collett. 

It quotes a Standard and Poors report from the US, that says most share fund managers fail to outperform the index. 

The stat's are pretty impressive, and about what we would expect.  72% of large company funds fail to outperform the index over 5 years and 78% of small company funds fail to outperform the relevant index over the same timeframe.

The report shows similar results for global sharemarket investing.

This is what we would expect - the high costs of 'normal' managed funds means that it is very hard for them to outperform. 

Regards,

Scott Francis