PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - William E. Fender AU - Brian P. Cunningham TI - What's the Chance of That Happening? AID - 10.3905/jwm.1999.320365 DP - 1999 Oct 31 TA - The Journal of Wealth Management PG - 51--55 VI - 2 IP - 3 4099 - https://pm-research.com/content/2/3/51.short 4100 - https://pm-research.com/content/2/3/51.full AB - This article revisits the debate on the relative benefits of passive and active management processes, focusing more specifically on the U.S. large capitalization stock equity market, represented by the S&P 500 index. It starts by exploring the pre-tax investment returns that an active money manager would have to produce to equal, after-taxes, the S&P 500 index. It then compares those returns to a universe of active money managers to determine how high the manager would have placed in his peer group. The results indicate that only a very small percentage of active money managers would have produced pre-tax investment returns sufficient to outperform, after-taxes, the S&P 500 index.