Why is that? Over 90% of them can’t consistently beat the market i.e. total returns that a simple index generates. So then why bother going with their “judgement”?

Even of the very few who can beat the market over the long term, such as over a decade, how do you pick beforehand? How do you choose the “winning horse”? There is no telling that a guy who bested the index last 5 years will do so the next.

And when we talk about the costs you pay, you can expect to lose between 1% to 3% of your capital every year – whether your investments perform well or not. That is quite a big blow to your compounding returns over 10 or 20 years.

Instead, I would recommend you consider allocating your money in simple low-cost index tracking funds. These are funds that mirror the index of a stock market – typically a basket of blue-chip companies, without an active manager – simply because the manager is not needed! The best feature is that the index updates itself automatically based on its underlying formula, thus ensuring only the most successful companies are part of it.