Dear Dagen: Enough With the Excuses

Just once it would be nice to see a mutual fund manager explain a bad year in two simple words: I stink.

Unfortunately, this never happens.

Instead, some fund managers churn out excuse after excuse for bad money management. They fill their quarterly shareholder letters with every possible euphemism and buzzword to explain their pathetic results. Maybe they're hoping you'll wind up so confused that you'll forget how awful the returns on their mutual funds have been. ...