Since the early days of security analysis, research has emphasized the potential benefit of buying stocks at a price that is reasonable to the fundamentals. The oldest benchmark for valuation is the dividend yield. Stocks that trade at a high dividend yield are often referred to as value stocks. Stocks that trade at a low dividend yield are often referred to as growth stocks. Value and growth investing have given rise to dramatically different records of long-term performance. A large body of evidence suggests that there has been a higher long term-term return both domestically and internationally from investing in value stocks.

Fixed-income funds are where investors traditionally look for safety and low volatility. Yet, the months of May and June were challenging for many fixed income investors, especially for those who have been reaching for higher yields. For example, mutual funds that invest in long-term U.S. Treasury bonds lost on average 6.25% in May and 3.25% in June. And funds that borrow to increase returns or that invest in higher yielding sectors such as privately issued mortgage backed securities and emerging market debt securities got hit even harder during a rough patch for bonds overall.

Theoretical and empirical work in finance over the past 50 years has led to an evolution in our understanding of how financial markets work. For instance, 40 years ago, building on the work of Harry Markowitz on portfolio selection and the efficient diversification of investments, William Sharpe and others initially thought there was only one dimension of expected returns in equity markets—the market itself.

Facts: Indexes have no costs, but funds do. Most funds underperform their benchmark (BM) at a minimum by ther expense ratio and some additional amount related to turnover.