According to a new infographic from Business Profiles, professional investors in charge of your money are not as successful as you may believe. Even the most successful have periods of underperformance, across all classes – venture capital, hedge funds, and managed funds. In addition, it’s difficult to predict with accuracy which investors will return better than market results in the future; research shows that people are duped by slick marketing and end up choosing investment options that are more expensive and less successful than simple index funds that track market movements.

The infographic shows that $1,000 invested 10 years ago (in 2003) would have returned only $1,069 if invested in an average venture capital fund – far less than most people would suppose given high profile exits of companies like Google and Facebook. The same amount in an average hedge fund would have returned slightly more ($1,170). But a simple investment in an index fund that tracked the S&P 500 would have returned $1,610. It’s therefore a myth that professional investors are mostly successful. They are actually mostly unsuccessful – and the small number that are successful are rarely successful for long.