Lecture 7 (20) Chapter 2: Evaluating Fund Performance: Benchmarks, Risk, and Real Consistency

A headline return number tells you almost nothing on its own. This lecture teaches you to actually read a factsheet the way it's meant to be read.

Rule One: Never Judge Absolute Return Alone

The only meaningful question is: return relative to what, over what period? This is the exact same discipline SPIVA uses in Lecture 3, just applied to one fund at a time instead of a whole industry. A fund returning 12% sounds great until you learn its benchmark returned 15%.