The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that the latest Dow Jones scorecard for Canada shows that just 5.4 per cent of domestic equity funds outperformed the S&P/TSX Composite Index over the past 10 years. The Globe's Tim Shufelt writes that beating the stock market is quite difficult, and while this may strike some readers as rather obvious news, Canadian investors still mostly entrust their money to stock pickers and market timers. Study after study shows only a tiny minority of elite investing professionals can outperform the market with any kind of regularity, in Canada or elsewhere. The likelihood of an investor picking one of the few funds that generates market-beating returns is remote. That does not seem to stop multitudes of Canadians investors from trying to beat the odds, and paying dearly for it. Industry propaganda (or, good public relations) plays a role: The investing public is still widely sold on the idea that they need not settle for market returns. Plenty of investors in recent years have awakened to the shaky track record of the stock picking business. No surprise, then, that a global movement has grown around a passive approach to investing: Enter the rise of exchange-traded funds.