Wimbledon wrapped up last week, and world #1 Jannik Sinner dominated in the men's single to claim the tournament championship.
On the surface it looked like a landslide, but when you dig into the details an interesting stat emerges: he only won 55% of points played (844 out of 1544).
In other words, in the short-term it was difficult to gauge how much better he is than the competition, as on each point it was nearly a coin toss on who would win; however, over the long-term his skill and advantage became more clear the longer the game was played.
Sinner ended up winning:
58% of games played (148 out of 254)
88% of sets played (21 out of 24)
100% of matches played (7 out of 7)
The lesson here through an investment lens is that the longer you play (invest), the higher your odds of winning (generating positive return) become:
Using the above chart from JPMorgan as an example, there have been "points" in the stock market (in this case the S&P 500 over the last 75 years) when you can win and lose big (+52% to -37% over one-year periods), but from a "game", "set" and "match" perspective you to can be a proverbial Wimbledon champ when it comes to creating wealth.
For example, there was no 20-year period for investors in the S&P 500 since 1950 where they made less than 6% annualized (in fact some 20-year periods had 18% annualized returns, which equates to $100 growing to over $2700).
However, this logic includes a key assumption in that you are playing the game rather than taking the added risk of trying to win the game - in stock market investing, that is generally defined as attempting to outperform the market over the long-term. As the chart below from Morningstar illustrates, this can be an unforced error for even professional money managers:
The blue line represents the success rate (defined as outperforming the equity benchmark, net of fees) of US Large-Blend mutual fund managers over rolling 1-year periods. Again, there are "points" along the way that saw such outperformance like in late 2022 through early 2023, but the longer they have played against the market the more often they lose the longer-term games, sets and matches.
For example, over the most recent 10-year period of this study, that success rate dropped to 8.1%; furthermore, the average active manager underperformed their benchmark by nearly 1.7% per year when even including those relative winners.
"Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day." - Benjamin Franklin
Sinner didn't need to win every point to claim the title, he just needed to keep playing and let his natural advantage compound slowly but surely by winning the points that mattered.
While his advantage is sheer talent, for investors at large that advantage is just time and patience.
Brent Coggins · Chief Investment Officer, Triad Wealth Partners
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