Rarely have fund managers and professional investors been as self-confident as they were in the old year.

This may be surprising at first glance, but it was extremely uncomfortable for investors in 2022: share prices fell more than they had in a long time, as did bond prices.

Nevertheless, the mood of the pros was not bad.

They were sure that now was the time to distinguish themselves.

After all, when stock market prices rise, it makes little difference whether investors rely on a classic fund manager or on an ETF that replicates the performance of important stock market barometers at low fees.

But in the downturn, quite a few money managers boasted that the real art shows itself: Only professionals can protect their customers' money from excessive losses in difficult times by clever reallocation.

An example of this is a statement made by Marty Flanagan, head of the fund company Invesco, in the spring of the FAS interview: “I therefore think the time has come for investors to go back to using active fund managers in the classic way.”

With a lot of luck, this may be successful in some individual cases.

But in terms of the industry as a whole, Flanagan is wrong.

This is shown by an evaluation by the analysis company Morningstar: According to this, between mid-2021 and mid-2022 only 35 percent of the equity funds launched in Europe managed to outperform the ETFs in their category.

Conversely, this means: 65 percent of the classic funds were unable to offer their investors any added value compared to ETFs.

The picture is similar for bond funds.

Here, 60 percent of the funds failed to beat comparable ETFs.

A shameful result.

However, it only confirms what science has known for a long time: in the long run, hardly anyone manages to do better than the market as a whole.

That doesn't mean all fund managers are fools.

But they should be more humble in the future.