Wednesday, February 17, 2016

It's Market Efficiency By A Length - Or Several Lengths Now

Back in 2013, we posted about Warren Buffett's bet with the founders of the Protégé Partners hedge fund that the S&P 500 would outperform a hedge fund index chosen by Protégé Partners over a 10-year period. At that time, the S&P had cumulatively outperformed the hedge fund index by about 8.5 percent. Even though the hedge funds outperformed the S&P 500 in 2015, the Vanguard Admiral index fund is up a  cumulative 65.7 percent in the last eight years, while the hedge fund index is up only 21.9 percent. One scenario for a possible comeback for the hedge funds, which is outlined by Ted Seides, the man who engineered the bet for Protégé, is a severe market downturn. Of course, he added about such a circumstance: "No one wins when that occurs."