Stock-picking is hard, even for the professionals -- and it is only getting harder. A recent study found evidence that it's getting harder and harder for active mutual funds to outperform index funds. Why? Because the mutual fund industry as a whole keeps getting bigger. The more investors there are looking for great investing ideas and exciting, underpriced stocks, the harder it is to find anything the rest of the world hasn't already discovered. In fact, the researchers found that active fund managers are actually getting better: they are more skilled at investing, but it doesn't matter, because the industry is simply getting too big. Managers have to be more skilled just to keep up with the increasing competition. If the pros are getting more and more skilled without getting ahead, then why do individual investors think they can beat the market? Data from San Francisco investment firm SigFig shows that the more individual investors trade, the less they earn. Individual investors also tend to bet too heavily on single stocks: 60 percent of investors have more than 10 percent of their portfolio invested in a single stock. Picking stocks and trading actively in an effort to beat the market simply doesn't work for individuals.sumer Affairs was "gratified" that Whole Foods admitted to issues with its prepackaged food labels.
