OT: Financial Planners...Yay/Nay?

[sluggo72]

1. Yes, American is one of the historically better performing active fund families often available in 401Ks at preferred terms. GFFFX expenses are low (.42%) so that helps a lot.
2. It looks like a "stealth" index fund - i.e., only slightly deviates from the index and with low expenses and turnover.
3. Don O'Neill is just one of several managers of your fund.
4. According to Morningstar, long-term it has bested the index by just .13% annually and lagged the last year by .35% - that's pretty much a dead heat.
5. S&P is an index, not a fund.

Duh? Who picks who is in the sp 500 index?? The people that work at S & P do, they are the defacto managers of the index, which many people buy as a fund.

 

[sluggo72]

You miss the entire point. One isolated case does not prove the point. Just by sheer chance at least a few will beat the odds but are unlikely to do it in the future: A trillion monkeys typing randomly will give us Shakespeare. Tell me you are not a logic or math major.
PS: And who provided the comparison - the guy selling?

so you need some more to prove the point? I can show you if you want, but really dont feel like messing with it, you wont believe them either. You want to do some research?
www.americanfunds.com and knock yourself out. I am not sure what the math major comment is all about, but yes I was math major.

 

[fkkkjm]

You miss the entire point. One isolated case does not prove the point. Just by sheer chance at least a few will beat the odds but are unlikely to do it in the future: A trillion monkeys typing randomly will give us Shakespeare. Tell me you are not a logic or math major.
PS: And who provided the comparison - the guy selling?

The market isn’t random, it’s efficient. If you know what the market doesn’t, you win. Extremely hard to do consistently but not random. Run a Monte Carlo simulation 10000 times with fake money and odds 51/49 in your favor. Over time you come out ahead A LOT. enter high frequency algorithmic traders. Again, you know even a little more than what’s reflected in the market, and you can tip the odds. Again extremely hard but not dumb luck.

 

[PSUSignore]

 

[cool1099]

The market isn’t random, it’s efficient. If you know what the market doesn’t, you win. Extremely hard to do consistently but not random. Run a Monte Carlo simulation 10000 times with fake money and odds 51/49 in your favor. Over time you come out ahead A LOT. enter high frequency algorithmic traders. Again, you know even a little more than what’s reflected in the market, and you can tip the odds. Again extremely hard but not dumb luck.

High frequency traders make $ taking advantage of short term market inefficiencies/anomalies. So the individual investor is going up against MIT PHDS doing it full time armed with supercomputers and inside information. Guess who is going to win.