In my country, the banks always package mutual fund as a "safe", "diversified", and yet potentially "high return" investment as oppose to buying a stock.
Most of the time, they will use the following line when trying to sell you a mutual fund:
You paid a professional fund manager to manage the fund for you, that's why it is safer and better than buying stocks on your own.
Are fund managers really responsible for ensuring the mutual fund performance is not too bad? Or they can just keep their job as usual regardless whether their mutual fund could beat the SP500?
If they are not responsible for making sure the fund performance is good, then isn't buying a mutual fund equivalent to paying a guy to potentially lose your money?