Hello,
My parents have someone who manages their money and I've just started learning about finance myself.
I put all of my money into SPY and VTI, both of which have nearly doubled in the past 5 years. However, from speaking to my parents, it sounds like their money has not doubled in that timeframe (or anything close to that really). When I mentioned that VTI had nearly 7x'd since 2000, they seemed very surprised. My father mentioned that he has indicated to their manager that he prefers aggressive investments, and that every team he meets with the 'money manager' this person says they're 'beating the baseline'.
My first reaction was that this seems negligent on the part of the money manager, or, at the very least that we should consider ditching them and just investing in SPY/VTI. I'm very confused what the 'baseline' could be other than SPY/VTI that they're consistently beating (but still only up 20 or 30% in the past 5 years). Am I missing something? Note that I haven't posted in FatFIRE, I don't think this is "stop playing" territory, and I'm very curious if they are being scammed.