With the committee basing most of its policies on measurable key performance indexes, which look into sales, profits and service quality, Day says management by majority vote and effective delegation at Wowprime makes his life much easier.

FORBES: Taiwan's Wowprime Attracts Eaters and Eager Employees

Second, the study was based on the performance of indexes when in reality, the vast majority of mutual funds under-perform those indexes because of fees and trading costs.

FORBES: Avoiding the 'Retirement Cliff'

While most ETFs track the performance of indexes or other benchmarks, some 55 actively managed ETFs have been launched, according to Morningstar, including 38 in the past three years.

WSJ: Ideas in Mutual Funds: Hot and Not Hot

So you have very few stocks that contribute to the performance of these indexes.

FORBES: 5 Equity Indices to Weigh Risk

Historically, September has been a time of poor performance for the indexes.

FORBES: Netflix And Baidu Maintain Momentum, Chinese Solar Stocks Sizzle

There are all sorts of new, modern statistical indexes to measure performance that now supplement batting average and runs batted in.

FORBES: Pitchers and Catchers and Fundraisers: Why Nonprofits Don't Really Play Moneyball

This return, 3M candidly confesses, is 1.5 percentage points above its own projections of market indexes for pension industry performance.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Then watch the indexes and compare your performance to them over time.

FORBES: Three Key Investment Concepts Everyone Needs to Know

However, as index-based mutual funds and ETFs continue to gain popularity and active managers are increasingly pressured to control their performance tracking error relative to benchmark indexes, the markets could become less efficient.

FORBES: Equal-Weight Indexers Didn't Suck Wind For A Decade

Emerging market indexes have even a worse performance.

FORBES: Silver Down 30%, Gold Off 11% As Panic Hits Precious Metals

Europe's 50 leading shares were up 0.4% at 2, 442.14 points on Tuesday afternoon, with a mixed performance among the region's main indexes: Britain's FTSE 100 was down 0.3% while France's Cac-40 was flat and Germany's Dax rose 0.8%.

FORBES: Europe Markets Brief

Their performance numbers are getting beaten by the public indexes.

FORBES: Venture Capital Returns Are Beaten By NASDAQ, S&P and DJIA