Larry Swedroe: 06:17

That's a really interesting point, I would say this, first of all, you can't compare today to 30 years ago, because the playing with much better technology. The rackets are much better than, you know, the wooden rackets that beyond bog and McEnroe were playing with in the 70s. So you know, the greatest players in the world today wouldn't look like the greatest players, then the matches, if you watch a board, Mac, or match, the pace of the game is so much slower than it is today. But the players today have much better training methods. The physical mat training is much better understanding of diets and physical therapy and stretching all of the important training, weight training and running into they're in much better condition. You know, McEnroe never, I think won a Grand Slam event after 25 and Djokovic, and Nadal and federal winning well into the 30s and mid 30s. Because they're much better. But that's an extreme point, remind me I want to come back to that now, because that is something that's very relevant. Okay. And that shows you how tough it is to win when the doll was playing Djokovic, it's very hard for either one to win, even though they were the best player in the world, because the competition is so tough. So let's go back to this issue. So let's talk about Barry Bonds was generally considered whether he was aided by medical technology and hormone treatment stuff like that is another story but he was the certainly the best hitter of his generation. Okay, and he was stronger than most hitters, but not stronger than all it is. He had quick a bat speed than most hitters, but not all of it is. He was one of the fastest runners of the game. Early in his career. He was a very good field, or add tremendous power, but he wasn't the best in any one single thing. But what you have to remember about Barry Bonds was that he was competing one on one against the pitcher. And Barry Bonds managed let's say to bat 300 in his career, I don't remember exactly what he did. But imagine if he faced a pitcher who had Sandy Colfax, his curveball generally considered the best curveball ever. Christy Mathewson screwable I'll call humbled, screwball Walter Johnson's fastball, uh, Greg Madison's changeup, etc. You know, all in one person Barry Bonds might not it 300 He probably ordered 200 or 180 or something, and never would have hit 750 or whatever homeruns he managed to hit. He was competing one on one. When stock pickers are trying to compete against the market, there are outperform they're not competing against you or me. Or even Warren Buffett, which would be tough enough to outperform Buffett or Peter Lynch, or any of the other great fund managers that are competing against the collective wisdom of the market, as if Barry Bonds was competing against the pitcher with Sandy Colfax, his curveball Walter Johnson's fastball, Greg Madison's changeup, etc. That's one of the Competition is much tougher. And to bring in your point 30 years ago when my first book was published, Charles Ellis had written at the same time his book winning the losers game. And he pointed out that 20% of active managers pretax, or generating statistically significant alpha, that's still a loser's game, especially after taxes where that number would be more likely to be 10%. But the competition is so much tougher. 30 years ago, most people who were doing stock selection may have been a train, you know, coming out of college as a lit major, or an art history major. And they sent went to work for Salomon Brothers got trained today, everybody who's managing money pretty much. He's got a PhD, or an MBA in finance from a top university has the best data available with high speed computers. And you're working with teams of other brilliant PhDs. I mean, their head of Research at Avantis is a rocket scientist. You know, this isn't rocket science. That's literally what is a rocket is the same thing is true of people at dimensional. And my co author Andy Birkin, who heads the research or Bridgeway, also has a PhD in physics, and has won the NASA award for the best software are there. These are people with likely far more skills smarter than you. And they're spending 100% of their time doing it. And they can't win. Because the collective wisdom of the market is so in a competition is so tough. That's the problem that active managers have. And the result has been that by 2010, Gene fama and French took Ellis's data, renewed it, and found that less than 2% of active managers were generating statistically significant alphas. And that was less than you would expect, randomly by chance. So that's what you have to recognize. If you think you're smart, maybe you're a bio engineer, and you're studying a company and you're think you've got an insight into what's happening? Well, maybe you have insights that could allow you to exploit your me if we were competing one on one, but you're not, you're competing against the brilliant scientists of Renaissance technologies, and lots of other, you know, hedge funds and high frequency trading funds, that are paying multimillion dollar salaries and have the best computers and the best database. And now artificial intelligence to scan, you know, financial statements are better than any human could do it, and they're all gonna have that same data, how are you likely to get this advantage? To give you a likelihood of winning, that should say you should try to play the game? I just don't see how it's likely.