Research by the Pensions Institute, based at Cass Business School in London, shows that just one in a hundred fund managers is able to beat the market consistently. It also concludes that even if you're lucky enough to have identified those 1% of managers in advance, you'll end up paying back any value they add in charges.
Do these high profile managers deserve their stellar reputation? Via a statistical technique called bootstrapping, the report concludes that no, the vast majority aren't just unlucky, but genuinely unskilled.
The report can be downloaded here.