Getting your player ready...
It sounds like a Zen koan: Instead of trying to beat the market, just be the market.
Such is the advice of many strategists, and that means investing in index funds rather than actively managed ones.
Data suggests that may be the way to go: The majority of funds run by active stock-pickers failed to beat their index in 2008, according to S&P. The one category where an active manager did help: large-cap value stocks. That category was decimated by failures of big banks, and nearly 80 percent of such actively managed funds beat the index.
