Anyone here remember Peter Lynch? He was probably the most famous investor in the world back in the 1980s. He ran the Fidelity Magellan Fund, which was lauded as a superstar of investment prowess. I was curious how the fund (whose symbol, FMAGX, I memorized decades ago) stacked up the boring old basic SPY. Here’s what SlopeCharts yielded for me:
In short, over the span of history we’ve got, SPY produced about TWICE the returns of Fidelity Magellan, even though they moved pretty much in lockstep. It seems pretty clear that the days of mutual funds are over, as they are relics of a bygone era and have been wholly replaced by ETFs. The funny thing is that FMAGX still has $26 billion under management, and no one could really explain why.
