Facts and historical evidence across different markets and multiple studies have proven that the market performance has been much higher than the investor performance in the same market /investment across different countries and spanning over many decades. The results are often the same, irrespective of even investment horizon. This difference between the return an investment organically produces over a fixed time frame, and the return an investor in that very investment actually earns, is coined as 'behaviour gap'.
There is a popular research report published every year by DALBAR on ‘Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior’ for past 22 years. Here are the brief extracts from the report for the period ending on 31st December 2022:
As can be clearly seen, the broad stock market in the US has outperformed the average equity fund investor by a huge margin, almost 50%, over the 30-year period. Interestingly, the outperformance is seen across all holding periods. Similar results were seen in almost all the past studies carried by DALBAR. Results have been on similar lines by many more studies.
Closer home too, a recent study done by one domestic fund house for the period from 2003 to 2022 showed that the equity funds delivered impressive returns of 19.1%, but the investor returns were just at 13.8%. The outperformance of nearly 38%, compounded, over nearly 20 years of investment is very alarming to say the least.
The verdict is simple - even though the Indian equity investor has created wealth, outperforming all other asset classes over the past two decades, he has clearly missed creating many more multiples of wealth creation due to his behaviour.