How to screw up your indexing strategy

Mark Hulbert of the New York Times revisits the indexing debate, by pointing to the results of a long-term study by The Hulbert Financial Digest tracking the performance of newsletter recommendations and the S&P index. Fewer than one in seven was able to beat the S&P over the 26 years of the study. But there's another element that must be considered, and that's the psychological stamina of individual investors:

This psychological dimension is crucial in interpreting long-term performance. In the usual pattern, buying and holding an index fund becomes a widely popular strategy during long bull markets At such times, many investors find it much better — and more predictable — than trying to determine either the market's short-term gyrations or which individual stocks will outperform others. By the bottom of the subsequent bear market, however, most of those converts to buy-and-hold index fund investing will have thrown in the towel, unable to tolerate the pain of pursuing it over the long term.

Hulbert notes that investors without the discipline to stick to the strategy during the downturn will lose more than they would have by following a newsletter's picks, or taking up the services of a professional adviser.


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