Past fund performance (or banging your head against a brick wall)

Ask any marketing executive nothing sells funds like a strong performance record. Performance, both relative and absolute, is the hot button used to pique investor interest and the majority of adverts focus on performance. Investors love to chase prices of any security and a disproportional allocation of wealth falls into funds that have generated superior performance in prior periods. There are numerous empirical studies refuting that any performance "persistence" of investment funds can be identified through the study of the past trends. To varying degrees, many investors are awa...