The old Wall Street saw, variously attributed to Warren Buffett or Humphrey B. Neill, author of the Art of Contrary Thinking, goes, “Never confuse genius with a bull market.” With that in mind, we present to you the performance of the Wilshire 5000 Equal Weight Index, which is one of the broadest measures of the stock market.
For the month of September the Wilshire 5000 Equal Weight Index was up 15.8% and for the last quarter to September 30 it was up 36.0%. You can see for yourself at the Wilshire Index Calculator (it’s a little clunky – you’ll need to select “Wilshire 5000 Equal Weight” in the “Broad/Style” box and set the date to September 30 2009). Year to date the index is up a whopping 83.02%. From March through September, the average stock is up 113.1%. If we take the Wilshire 4500 Equal Weight Index, which excludes the top 500 stocks by market capitalization of the 5000 Equal Weight Index, the return is +120% from March to September 2009. Sobering.
Hat tip Bo.
Greenbackd 
Sobering thought indeed.
I guess this is the little diry secret of value investing: the alpha of value investors is rather small if one compares to the appropriate index, rather than the S&P 500. By which I mean, that the gains that value investors achieve essentially* arise from the overall changes in valuation of value/small caps, rather than from their our stockpicking ability.
*To a first, crude, yet realistic, approximation.
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