Bad Timing Does Not Cost Investors 15% of Their Funds’ Returns: An Examination of Morningstar’s “Mind the Gap” Study
晨星研究称投资者因择时不佳每年损失1.2%回报，但本文用相同数据发现实际损失仅0.10%，质疑了晨星结论的准确性。
Morningstar argues in their annual “Mind the Gap” study that, because of the “timing and magnitude of investors’ purchases and sales,” mutual fund investors fail to capture their funds’ full returns. Their 2025 study estimates that the shortfall, or Return Gap, was 1.2% per year from 2015 through 2024, which is “equivalent to around 15% of those funds’ gains over that span.” This result is often interpreted as evidence that mutual fund investors poorly time their trades. However, we find that, using the same sample, poor timing by mutual fund investors costs them only 0.10% per year.