Underperformance of Actively Managed Portfolios: Some Behavioral Insights

Two glaring anomalies in investment management are apparent: (1) after fees, active portfolio managers do worse than market indices, and (2) clients continue to pay for services they don’t receive. The purpose of this paper is to offer explanations of these anomalies from a behavioral perspective. We explore some of the cognitive biases that perpetuate active management and subsequent underperformance, including herding, disposition, and endowment effects, as well as conservatism and status quo biases, overconfidence, and agency problems. Investors’ continued use of active managers despite persistent disappointing returns is attributed to being victims of framing effect, hot-hand fallacy, lack of knowledge as well as intimidation or insecurity, and status quo bias. We propose some ways that portfolio managers and investors could improve their decision making.