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It can be done, anyone can have a good year, however, outperforming the S&P 500 is more than just 1 year thing, right? Can you do it for at least 10 years?
Warren Buffet had a well-known bet** with a fund manager about this very issue from 2007–2017 (beating the S&P 500) and the fund manager was ahead the first few years, but then was never able to catch up.
Over the course of the bet the S&P 500 index fund returned 7.1% compounded annually, significantly more than the basket of funds selected by a fund manager at Protégé Partners. That basket only returned an average of 2.2%.