Even Fidelity’s $230 Billion Star Manager Has Robinhood Anxiety

Contrafund manager questions mutual funds’ appeal to Gen Z
He regrets selling Tesla, still likes Buffett’s Berkshire

WATCH: Will Danoff, who as manager of Fidelity’s Contrafund has beaten the S&P 500 for three decades, makes the case for active management in the era of ETFs and commission-free trading on Robinhood Markets.Source: Bloomberg)

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By Erik Schatzker

September 17, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Will Danoff has been wondering why billions of dollars keep flowing out of the Contrafund, the giant mutual fund he manages at Fidelity Investments. Performance isn’t the problem. He’s up 21% this year, trouncing the S&P 500’s 6.2% return. His conclusion: Today’s kids want something sexier.

“There’s a demographic issue,” Danoff, who has beaten the benchmark by an average of more than 3 percentage points annually over three decades, said in a Bloomberg Front Row interview. “We need to appeal to the Gen Z-ers and the younger generation as well, and luckily I think our app is quite good. But you know, a typical Gen Z-er may not be as interested in owning a mutual fund.”