Enrich Your Future 11: Long-Term Outperformance Is Not Always Evidence of Skill

In this episode of Enrich Your Future, Andrew and Larry Swedroe discuss Larry’s new book, Enrich Your Future: The Keys to Successful Investing. In this series, they discuss Chapter 11: The Demon of Chance.LEARNING: Don’t always attribute skill to success, sometimes it could be just luck. “Just because there is a correlation doesn’t mean causation. You must be careful not to attribute skill and not luck to success.”Larry Swedroe In this episode of Enrich Your Future, Andrew and Larry Swedroe discuss Larry’s new book, Enrich Your Future: The Keys to Successful Investing. The book is a collection of stories that Larry has developed over 30 years as the head of financial and economic research at Buckingham Wealth Partners to help investors. You can learn more about Larry’s Worst Investment Ever story on Ep645: Beware of Idiosyncratic Risks.Larry deeply understands the world of academic research and investing, especially risk. Today, Andrew and Larry discuss Chapter 11: The Demon of Chance.Chapter 11: The Demon of ChanceIn this chapter, Larry discusses why investors confuse skill with what he calls “the demon of luck,” a term he uses to describe the random and unpredictable nature of market outcomes.Larry cautions that before concluding that because an investment strategy worked in the past, it will work in the future, investors should be aware of the uncertainty and ask if there is a rational explanation for the correlation between the outcome and strategy.According to Larry, the assumption is that while short-term outperformance might be a matter of luck, long-term outperformance must be evidence of skill. However, a basic knowledge of statistics is crucial in understanding that with thousands of money managers playing the game, the odds are that a few, not just one, will produce a long-term performance record.Today, there are more mutual funds than there are stocks. With so many active managers trying to win, statistical theory shows that it’s expected that some will likely outperform the market. However, beating the market is a zero-sum game before expenses since someone must own all stocks. And, if some group of active managers outperforms the market, there must be another group that underperforms. Therefore, the odds of any specific active manager being successful are, at best, 50/50 (before considering the burden of higher expenses active managers must overcome to outperform a benchmark index fund).Skill or “the demon of luck?From probability, it’s expected that randomly, half the active managers would outperform in any one year, about one in four to outperform two years in a row, and one in eight to do so three years in a row. Fund managers who outperform for even three years in a row are often declared to be gurus by the financial media. But are they gurus, or is it just luck? According to Larry, it is hard to tell the difference between the two. Without this knowledge of statistics investors are likely to confuse skill with “the demon of luck.”Bill Miller, the Legg Mason Value Trust manager, was acclaimed as the next Peter Lynch. He managed to do what no current manager has done—beat the S&P 500 Index 15 years in a row (1991–2005). Indeed, that could be luck. You can’t rely on that performance as a predictor of future greatness. Larry turns to academic...