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Theodore Sturgeon argued that the surviving tenth of any field is worth finding. New data from S&P Dow Jones Indices tests whether that holds for UK funds. Of the 80 sterling-denominated UK equity funds in the top quartile at the end of 2021, three were still there four years later. Over two non-overlapping five-year periods, funds starting in the third quartile reached the top far more often than funds already there held their place.

Warnings that index funds have broken the stock market all imply a threshold: a share of the market at which price discovery fails. Nobody making the argument names it. Owen Lamont, writing in the Financial Analysts Journal, argues that no such number exists short of complete passive ownership, and that what actually determines whether prices stay informative is who is left doing the trading. His case, the strongest peer-reviewed research against it, and what the performance

Leopold Aschenbrenner had better access to AI than almost any investor. His hedge fund grew to $24bn in less than two years. Yet it collapsed not because his AI thesis was wrong, but because leverage forced him to sell. The AI investing risk his story reveals is one most investors overlook.

Buy the clean companies, avoid the dirty ones, and emissions fall. That is the promise almost every sustainable fund rests on. New calibrations from Samuel Hartzmark of Boston College and Kelly Shue of Yale suggest the version of ESG divestment that leaves a high-emitting industry altogether can push global emissions up, while staying inside the industry and holding the cleanest companies in it brings them down. On a fund factsheet, the two look identical.

Investors instinctively turn to past performance when choosing funds. But new Morningstar research on 6,003 European funds finds it is far more reliable as a warning sign than a buy signal.

Buying an ESG fund is widely assumed to change corporate behaviour. New research from Drexel University and the University of Texas at Dallas finds that most ESG funds have little measurable impact — but a committed minority, with a genuine financial incentive to engage, drives real improvements in the companies they hold. The difference lies not in what a fund owns but in how it behaves as an owner.

A new working paper has documented the largest price inefficiency ever found in the stock market: a pure-news signal with a Sharpe ratio of 3.1, more than double any known factor. But the researchers used a frontier AI model, millions of news articles and institutional trading costs to find it — and the same evidence that shows markets are inefficient also shows why an ordinary investor still can't beat them.

The managers running the biggest active funds picked stocks that beat the market in 2025 — and most still lagged their benchmark. A Morningstar do-nothing experiment and a body of academic research explain why active funds underperform even when the picking is good: skilled buying undone by poor selling, the hidden cost of trading, and the incentives that keep managers churning. The UK evidence points the same way.

The star manager myth, exposed: a portfolio with no manager beat the NASDAQ by nearly double. The trick that explains real star managers too.

Most fund manager AI systems operate on autopilot, closely tracking the index while charging premium fees for active management. If your portfolio is essentially running itself, why are you paying someone to sit in the cockpit?

Y TREE's analysis of 550 portfolios found that 84 per cent of wealth managers underperformed in 2025. Wealth management underperformance cost investors up to a third of their expected returns — and most don't even know it's happening.

A glowing golden halo hovering above an ordinary cardboard box on a warehouse shelf, representing how HALO stocks are standard investments dressed up with compelling marketing

Every year, some active fund families respond to the SPIVA scorecard with their own numbers — and those numbers always look better. They choose the start dates, benchmarks, and fee treatments that flatter them most. Here's how to see through it, and the one test that exposes what fund family marketing routinely hides.

Scott Adams damaged his own reputation in his later years. But long before that, the creator of Dilbert was using satire to make a serious, evidence-aligned case against active fund management — reaching tens of millions of readers along the way.

A major Morningstar study of more than 5,800 funds has delivered a clear verdict on concentrated funds: they charge higher fees, deliver lower returns, and suffer deeper losses than their more diversified peers. The evidence suggests most investors would be better off on the main road.

The fund industry warns that S&P 500 concentration makes your index fund dangerous. A major new study covering nearly a century of data tells a very different story — and suggests the real risk is listening to people who profit from your fear.

Avantis ETFs give UK investors direct access to systematic factor investing for the first time. Here's why I own three of them — and what could go wrong.

What if Buffett's investment strategy was never about genius? New research shows 87% of his returns came from factors anyone can access.

Active fund managers keep warning about passive investing's dangerous rise. But new research covering $784 billion in institutional assets reveals active management still dominates — capturing 97% of all fees paid.

Terry Smith blames index funds for Fundsmith's five-year slump — but international market data, factor analysis, and 2024's high-dispersion conditions tell a different story. Here's what the evidence actually shows.