Markets
Picking Investments is Nothing Like Buying a New Car
As consumers, we are used to researching the many choices we have before making a buying decision.
For most people, the process of buying a new product (such as a car) might look something like this:
- Recognize a need
- Search for information
- Evaluate options
- Make a purchase
- Evaluate satisfaction with purchase
In other words, we figure out what we need, and then we seek to learn more about our choices. After reviewing relevant articles, product ratings, buyer reviews, and other sources of information, we can make a final and informed decision.
Same Process For Picking Investments?
Does the above process look similar to how you approach investing, particularly in choosing funds?
If so, Vanguard says it might be worth re-framing how you look at things. Here’s why picking investments is different.
Vanguard, which manages over $3.5 trillion in assets, may have a good point.
The past performance of a car model is hugely important to a consumer’s decision. That’s because the next Honda Civic built in the factory is guaranteed to be much like previous Honda Civics before it.
For investments, however, everyone knows that past performance does not predict future results. And even though this advice is ubiquitous in the investing world, it is still commonly ignored by many investors.
Here’s what happens to top performing funds:
Even though top funds did well in previous years, there isn’t much correlation with the future.
In the above case, top-rated funds got an influx of capital, which made it harder to get the same return. Funds rated five stars by Morningstar received $60.7 billion in new inflows, but dropped 147 basis points in annualized returns in their subsequent 36 month periods.
The other reason for this is that fund management is just a relatively level playing field, and it’s hard to stay a top performer over the long-term.
The best funds leading up to 2010 were all over the place for the next five years, and only 16.2% of them continued to be top performers. Meanwhile, an astonishing 24.1% of the top performing funds fell to the bottom performing quintile, while 12.5% of funds were liquidated or merged.
Keeping this all in mind, Vanguard recommends adopting a different process for picking investments:
We can’t say we disagree for almost any type of portfolio.
Markets
Ranked: The World’s 50 Top Countries by GDP, by Sector Breakdown
This graphic shows GDP by country, broken down into three main sectors: services, industry, and agriculture.

Visualized: The Three Pillars of GDP, by Country
Over the last several decades, the service sector has fueled the economic activity of the world’s largest countries. Driving this trend has been changes in consumption, the easing of trade barriers, and rapid advancements in tech.
We can see this in the gross domestic product (GDP) breakdown of each country, which gets divided into three broad sectors: services, industry, and agriculture.
The above graphic from Pranav Gavali shows GDP by country, and how each sector contributes to an economy’s output, with data from the World Bank.
Drivers of GDP, by Country
As the most important and fastest growing component of GDP, services make up almost 60% of GDP in the world’s 50 largest countries. Following this is the industrial sector which includes the production of raw goods.
Below, we show how each sector contributes to GDP by country as of 2021:
Country | Services (% GDP) | Industry (% GDP) | Agriculture (% GDP) | Other (% GDP) | GDP (T) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
🇺🇸 U.S. | 77.6 | 17.9 | 1.0 | 3.6 | $22.9 |
🇨🇳 China | 53.5 | 39.3 | 7.2 | 0.0 | $16.9 |
🇯🇵 Japan | 69.9 | 28.8 | 1.0 | 0.4 | $5.1 |
🇩🇪 Germany | 62.9 | 26.7 | 0.9 | 9.5 | $4.2 |
🇬🇧 UK | 71.6 | 17.3 | 0.7 | 10.4 | $3.1 |
🇫🇷 France | 70.3 | 16.7 | 1.6 | 11.4 | $2.9 |
🇮🇳 India | 47.9 | 26.1 | 17.3 | 8.7 | $2.9 |
🇮🇹 Italy | 65.0 | 22.7 | 1.9 | 10.4 | $2.1 |
🇨🇦 Canada* | 67.7 | 24.1 | 1.7 | 6.6 | $2.0 |
🇰🇷 South Korea | 57.0 | 32.4 | 1.8 | 8.8 | $1.8 |
🇧🇷 Brazil | 57.8 | 20.2 | 7.5 | 14.6 | $1.6 |
🇦🇺 Australia | 65.7 | 25.5 | 2.3 | 6.5 | $1.6 |
🇷🇺 Russia | 54.1 | 31.8 | 3.9 | 10.3 | $1.6 |
🇪🇸 Spain | 67.4 | 20.4 | 2.6 | 9.6 | $1.4 |
🇲🇽 Mexico | 59.2 | 30.8 | 3.9 | 6.1 | $1.3 |
🇮🇩 Indonesia | 42.8 | 39.8 | 13.3 | 4.1 | $1.2 |
🇮🇷 Iran | 47.3 | 38.0 | 12.4 | 2.3 | $1.1 |
🇳🇱 Netherlands | 69.4 | 17.9 | 1.5 | 11.2 | $1.0 |
🇨🇭 Switzerland | 71.9 | 24.6 | 0.6 | 2.8 | $0.8 |
🇹🇷 Turkiye | 52.8 | 31.1 | 5.5 | 10.6 | $0.8 |
🇹🇼 Taiwan | 60.6 | 38.0 | 1.5 | 0.0 | $0.8 |
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia | 46.5 | 44.7 | 2.7 | 6.1 | $0.8 |
🇵🇱 Poland | 56.9 | 27.9 | 2.2 | 13.0 | $0.7 |
🇧🇪 Belgium | 68.8 | 19.6 | 0.7 | 10.9 | $0.6 |
🇸🇪 Sweden | 65.0 | 22.5 | 1.3 | 11.3 | $0.6 |
🇮🇱 Israel | 72.4 | 17.2 | 1.3 | 9.1 | $0.5 |
🇦🇷 Argentina | 52.5 | 23.6 | 7.1 | 16.8 | $0.5 |
🇦🇹 Austria | 62.4 | 25.8 | 1.2 | 10.5 | $0.5 |
🇳🇬 Nigeria | 43.8 | 31.4 | 23.4 | 1.4 | $0.5 |
🇹🇭 Thailand | 56.3 | 35.0 | 8.7 | 0.0 | $0.5 |
🇮🇪 Ireland | 55.4 | 37.8 | 1.0 | 5.8 | $0.5 |
🇭🇰 Hong Kong | 89.7 | 6.0 | 0.1 | 4.3 | $0.4 |
🇩🇰 Denmark | 66.7 | 19.3 | 0.9 | 13.1 | $0.4 |
🇸🇬 Singapore | 70.3 | 24.4 | 0.0 | 5.3 | $0.4 |
🇿🇦 South Africa | 63.0 | 24.5 | 2.5 | 10.0 | $0.4 |
🇵🇭 Philippines | 61.0 | 28.9 | 10.1 | 0.0 | $0.4 |
🇪🇬 Egypt | 52.5 | 31.2 | 11.4 | 4.9 | $0.4 |
🇧🇩 Bangladesh | 51.3 | 33.3 | 11.6 | 3.7 | $0.4 |
🇳🇴 Norway | 51.8 | 36.3 | 1.7 | 10.2 | $0.4 |
🇻🇳 Vietnam | 41.2 | 37.5 | 12.6 | 8.8 | $0.4 |
🇲🇾 Malaysia | 51.6 | 37.8 | 9.6 | 1.1 | $0.4 |
🇦🇪 U.A.E. | 51.6 | 47.5 | 0.9 | 0.0 | $0.4 |
🇵🇰 Pakistan | 52.1 | 18.8 | 22.7 | 6.4 | $0.3 |
🇵🇹 Portugal | 64.7 | 19.6 | 2.2 | 13.5 | $0.3 |
🇫🇮 Finland | 60.3 | 24.1 | 2.3 | 13.4 | $0.3 |
🇨🇴 Colombia | 58.0 | 24.9 | 7.6 | 9.5 | $0.3 |
🇷🇴 Romania | 59.1 | 26.7 | 4.5 | 9.6 | $0.3 |
🇨🇿 Czechia | 58.8 | 30.3 | 1.8 | 9.1 | $0.3 |
🇨🇱 Chile | 54.4 | 31.3 | 3.6 | 10.6 | $0.3 |
🇳🇿 New Zealand* | 65.6 | 20.4 | 5.7 | 8.4 | $0.2 |
Industrial sector includes construction. Agriculture sector includes forestry and fishing. *Data as of 2019.
In the U.S., services make up nearly 78% of GDP. Apart from Hong Kong, it comprises the highest share of GDP across the world’s largest economies. Roughly 80% of American jobs in the private sector are in services, spanning from healthcare and entertainment to finance and logistics.
Like America, a growing share of China’s GDP is from services, contributing to almost 54% of total economic output, up from 44% in 2010. This can be attributed to rising incomes and higher productivity in the sector as the economy has grown and matured, among other factors.
In a departure from the top 10 biggest countries globally, agriculture continues to drive a large portion of India’s GDP. India is the world’s second largest producer of wheat and rice, with agriculture accounting for 44% of the country’s employment.
While the services sector has grown in India, it makes up a greater share in other emerging economies such as Brazil (58%), Mexico (59%), and the Philippines (61%).
Growth Dynamics
Services-led growth has risen faster than manufacturing across many developing nations, underpinned by productivity growth.
This structural shift is seen across economies. In many countries in Africa, for instance, jobs have increasingly moved from agriculture to services and trade, where it now accounts for 42% of jobs.
These growth patterns are supported by rising incomes in developing economies, while innovation in tech is lowering barriers to enabling service growth. As the industrial sector makes up a lower share of trade and economic activity, the service sector is projected to make up 77% of global GDP by 2035.
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