The Morale Morass

摘要

Active managers - which almost all attendees at the conference represented - are as good at their craft as they've ever been. The idea they're not, with a few caveats, is absurd. Whatever the market environment, active management is a zero-sum game. If the market goes up 20 percent or down 20 percent, some active managers do well, some do poorly, and their wins and losses net out. I'm reminded of Matthew McCo-naughey's chest-thumping cameo in The Wolf of Wall Street, as he tells a somehow sober Leonardo DiCaprio that the stock business is "a whazzy, it's a whoozy, it's a fairy dust." Or as AQR Capital Management's Cliff Asness more eloquently told me on Twitter: "I think [that argument is] mainly just gibberish. It's never been a stock picker's market and never will be." Put more positively for the active managers at the conference: If ever it was a stock picker's market, ever it will be.