"Driven by the impact of fees upon results, poor relative returns and the difficulty in finding and retaining managers that can consistently outperform the many types of markets, more investors have been defaulting to the cheaper and seemingly easier solution of just owning a market basket of securities. [This article] examines the hits and strikeouts of the ongoing debate ... [T]o the question of 'is it possible to achieve excess return relative to a passive market benchmark in a highly competitive environment?' -- the answer is unequivocally 'yes' ... [P]oll the members of the World Champion Kansas City Royals for their baseball-equivalent response. Is that feat easy? For that, ask the members of the other 29 teams."

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