I do not own anything that I wouldn't hold for years and years. My plan to make money via knowledge and work is through writing software. The risky instrument

I do not own anything that I wouldn't hold for years and years. My plan to make money via knowledge and work is through writing software. The risky instruments I hold are options in the company I work for and equity in my own projects. I want to spend near 0 time on financial engineering -- the purpose of the portfolio is to balance the risks I take at work. My accumulated wealth is in low-fee index funds (mostly stocks, but a fair amount of bonds and international). In your specific example, BIPIX is trying to outdo the Dow Jones U.S. Biotechnology Index. In 3yrs, DJBioTech returned ~200% and BIPIX is better (~240%). I'd have to know the fees to know which returned better net fees. The BIPIX managers claim they are going for 1.5 return of the DJBioTech, which they have not in the 3 year period. In the 1 year they are swapping back and forth (BIPIX currently (EDIT: I said ahead, but it's actually) behind not taking fees into account) If I wanted the return of a specific sub-market industry, I would buy the unmanaged index that best represents that industry. Basically -- we have no evidence that mutual fund managers can beat indexes in the long term, but we know fees and taxes for sure.