In a recent New York Times article, Jeff Sommer, discussed the implications of new data from Dalbar, a research firm that studies the behavior of mutual fund investors.  Their latest research shows that over the past 10 years, stock investors under-performed the S&P 500 by 3.4% per year (13.1% vs 9.7%) and bond investors under-performed inflation by 1.1% per year (1.8% vs 0.7%).  The research shows that the difference in returns is driven by investors attempting to outsmart the market by moving back and forth between asset classes.  The results above show that what investors really need isn’t better insights into the market, but rather, more acceptance that we can’t successfully predict the future.