How has the stock market done over the past 4.5 years? If you answered “great,” I know where you are looking. At the S&P 500 ($SPX) or growth-oriented index funds. You’re probably focused on the biggest U.S. stocks. Because if you look anywhere else, frankly, it’s a mess.
It has been for a long time. Long enough so that we need to talk about it seriously. Because this table, a summary of a study I published recently, essentially says “stock picking” has been a coin flip since the start of 2022. Not coincidentally, that’s when interest rates climbed off the mat and again became competition for the broader stock market.
