Some chefs refuse to swallow their own cooking

No wonder so few funds can beat their benchmarks — their managers don't trust their money to them either (Sue Asci, InvestmentNews):

Morningstar Inc. today released a study indicating that many fund managers live by a philosophy of “invest as I say, not as I do.”

The Chicago-based fund tracker found that 47% of the managers of U.S. stock funds reported no ownership in their funds at all.

Morningstar also found that 61% managers of foreign stock funds do not hold positions in their funds, compared with 66% of managers of taxable bond funds, 71% of managers of balanced funds and 80% of managers of municipal bond funds.

The study was the first comprehensive look at fund ownership among the some 6,000 funds in the firm’s database, said Russel Kinnel, director of fund research at Morningstar.

The article notes certain circumstances in which it is inappropriate for managers to invest in a fund (e.g., managing a single-state bond fund for a state in which they do not reside), but overall this result shows that a significant minority of funds are "gimmicky, market-driven" products, as lovingly described by Morningstar's Kinnel.