It’s no surprise that a huge theme these days is the wisdom of “buy and hold” (in other words, Warren Buffet-style, never-sell-anything investing). Out of curiosity, I decided to look at a chart I hadn’t had reason to examine in years: that of fabled mutual fund Fidelity Magellan, once led by the mythic Peter Lynch.

What struck me is that, over a period of about 17 years, the fund has basically gone nowhere. I’ve compared the market two bubbles ago (yeah, that’s how I’m measuring time these days) with the present, and as you can see, you would have had to stomach two gargantuan drawdowns, each of which was followed by a Fed-driven rally. And, in the end, you wouldn’t have budged.

When I tweeted this out, apologists for FMAGX said I wasn’t including dividends. I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty positive that this chart takes dividend adjustments into account.

In fairness to the market overall, I must say that Fidelity seems not to deserve its tremendous reputation. I’m not quite sure what the highly-paid managers of Fidelity do with themselves, but comparing the dumb-as-a-rock SPY (in blue) with the actively-managed FMAGX (black), I’d say one of these is beating the other.