Michael Wagner in U.S. News & World Report: The Importance of Focusing on What You Can Control in Investing

Michael Wagner, the co-founder and COO at Omnia Family Wealth, was recently featured in U.S. News & World Report, highlighting a recent report by S&P Dow Jones Indices’ SPIVA Scorecard that revealed 93.4% of large-cap funds underperformed the S&P 500 over the trailing 15 years. This indicates that most retail investors and professional fund managers will likely fail to outperform an index consistently over the long run. Wagner believes in focusing on what Omnia can control when it comes to investing, which generally involves the risks taken, expenses incurred and taxes paid. To keep these variables under control, few investment products do a better job than index funds.

Index funds passively replicate the holdings of an index, which measure the performance of a specific market, asset class, sector or strategy. The article emphasizes that the idea behind index investing is to “keep it simple, stupid” (KISS) for the vast majority of investors. The article further explains that actively managed funds select their securities through a fund manager’s proprietary strategy or based on quantitative rules to outperform a benchmark. In contrast, passively managed index funds replicate the holdings of an index.

Read the full article here.