The Wall Street Journal and Aesop see eye-to-eye on the old hare-tortoise contest.

This weekend, Journal columnist Jason Zweig compared tactical funds -- the hare -- with the testudinal buy-and-hold strategy.

He writes that, while most tactical funds were started after 2008 and it's too soon to draw conclusions, the early results don't look great. Over the last six years, tactical funds on the whole have returned 4.9 percent per year, six points a year behind their benchmarks, Zweig writes.

Zweig spoke with the PMs of several tactical funds -- the Forward Tactical Growth Fund, the Cambria Global Tactical ETF, and the Wells Fargo Advantage WealthBuilder Tactical Equity Portfolio about this underperformance. The problem, as Zweig boils it down, is that the market is up, making tactical funds look worse by comparison. 

Edited by: Chris Cumming


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