<prompt> Human: Simply put, the effect of fees on investment can be devastating When you consider that its impossible to identify those active fund managers or actively managed funds that will outperform their benchmark after costs in advance, the low-cost, lazy index investing strategy starts to look pretty attractive.  <response>: I was involved in litigation where the skills of a financial analyst from a major international investment firm was at issue. He earned anywhere between 300k and 850k a year. Everyone agreed that this man was a fucking wizard of a financial analyst. I saw hours of discussion of how brilliant he was and how he always out performed the market. Months later, I realized that none of them were talking about his skill at reading the market and making good investment choices. They were talking about his ability to get clients and their money to invest and charge fees on. It was not about his ability to invest wisely.In the past year and a half to two years, he has lost around 40 of his personal wealth due to shitty investment choices. 