Portfolios With Purpose: Professional Failure?

Hello WSO,

I enrolled in this year's Portfolio's with Purpose contest.

For those unfamiliar, PwP is a charity that "hosts an annual stock selection competition in which participants compete on behalf of their favorite charities."

Participants are placed into one of three groups:

Novices - open to the public

Professionals - minimum of 2 years experience in financial services

and Masters - by invitation only (this year's master class includes industry heavyweights such as David Einhorn, Bill Ackman, David Tepperman, and Joel Greenblatt)

Contestants choose 5 individual stocks with a market cap of at least $1 billion. Investors are allowed to go long or short, and can make up to 5 trades over the course of the year. At the end of the 12 month period, the person with the highest percentage gain is the winner in their category.

I'm doing reasonably well right now (right around 20th place), but the performance between divisions is very interesting. If you check out the image I attached to this post you will see that, not surprisingly, the masters are beating the novices handily,approximately 7% to 2%. However the professionals at a ~1% gain are actually losing to the novices at +2%.

Obviously this isn't a scientific study, but the sample size is reasonable and the results so far are very interesting, seemingly lending more support to low cost index funds.

Any other readings on the data?