errantember

When I hear people talk about playing the stocks, I'm always a little curious how well they're doing compared to an indexed approach. I've got my IRA split equally between four no-load mutual funds: S&P 500 index, NASDAQ index, bond market, and foreign (VFINX, VBFMX, VEURX, NAESX, if you're curious). At the moment, they are up 25%, 2%, 35%, and 14% (in no particular order), for an average return of 19% over about 2.5 years since I started this IRA. I realize that short-term gains can be offset over time, and I shouldn't expect an average that high, but holy cow, it seems to be pretty good considering all I do is dump money in and forget about it. I guess if playing stocks is fun for a person, then it's no less worthy than any other hobby (I, personally, like poi and shooting), but I sometimes get the sense that stock traders think they can outperform a balanced, indexed strategy, and I wonder how often that's actually true, considering the trouble to which they seem to put themselves.