Some financial advisers are trying to apply the same idea to the mutual-fund universe by calculating upside and downside "capture ratios" against benchmark indexes.
Flip through the pages of any financial publication and you will likely see several ads by mutualfund companies touting their superior relative historical performance and high ranking amongst their peer group and benchmark.
"The SEC should never have allowed the ICI to claim it represents the interests of mutualfund investors, because it's a blatant falsehood, " says Edward Siedle of Benchmark Financial Services, a firm that investigates money management wrongdoing.