Nothing beats a market index that has:
... no cost
... no risk management
... no concern for loss of capital
... And propelled higher by the Plunge Protection Team at the Federal Reserve that has prevented a meltdown since quantitative easing began by buying index derivatives.
How could anything do better than a no cost, manipulated index?? Seems impossible.
Please update this evaluation after the next collapse and we can compare all the alternative strategies over a complete market cycle.
Keep in mind that an index is simply a list of stocks that someone has chosen to include in the list.
A large index like the S&P 500 has more stocks and covers a broader range of the market than a smaller index like the Dow Jones Industrials, but both indexes are simply lists of stocks that someone has picked.
Insider trading. Next question. (^_^)