I doubt anyone would pay 2% management fee and a 20% share on profit to a fund who is just going to keep the money in cash. Might as well do it myself for free.
The point is, "Stick it in the SAP 500" would have been a losing proposition. You would have lost 20% of your money, and lost 10 years of opportunity cost to boot.
I get your point. But my point is that I doubt a hedge fund would have been performing better than the 20% loss of the S&P. Maybe it would have incurred a 40% loss. I think that in the investment world, action bias is very strong and literally doing nothing is not seen as a good thing.
We both agree that if you could have foreseen that decade, you would have sold all your stocks in 1998, put it on a savings account, and only have taken it out again in 2008.
I am glad we agree! I also 100% agree that the SAP500 may have performed better than plenty of funds 1998-2008. I'm sure we could even dig some up that did horribly. There were even funds 2008-2018 that liquidated during the Buffett bet :)
You are missing the point. I conceded your point in the thread below.
Anyone who says "just stick it in the SAP500 and you'll make some money" is hiding the fact that even with a 10 year time-frame, that statement is not always true.
1998 - 2008 was a blood bath for many, despite the fact that you had 2 legitimate booms in there.
