You most definitely can beat the market, and beat it by a lot. However, the bigger your holdings, the less likely it is to beat the market, since your trade ex

You most definitely can beat the market, and beat it by a lot. However, the bigger your holdings, the less likely it is to beat the market, since your trade execution suffers the more you're trying to trade at a time (try selling off 100K shares in something when the daily volume is less than a million, for instance). Anyhow, half the point of a hedge fund isn't even to beat the market, but to hedge against market downturns. The ones beating the market are prop traders and the like...