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The Morningstar “star” system is often used by brokers and advisors to pitch hot mutual funds. A five star rating means huge inflows for mutual funds. A one or two star rating can mean significant outflows as investors flee these funds.

Over the years, there has been considerable research demonstrating that high Morningstar ratings are not predictive of future performance. Some of these studies demonstrated little difference between the performance of five star and three star funds in the years after the rating was given.

A new study by Professors Morey and Gottesman of Pace University concludes the opposite. The study looked at Morningstar rated, domestic equity funds for the three year period from July, 2002-June, 2005. They concluded that “higher rated funds, for the most part, significantly outperform lower rated funds.”

So, should you run out and buy five star rated funds?

Not if you are interested in superior returns.

With minor exceptions, the study found that, in all star categories, index funds outperformed all of the rated mutual funds.

This finding is not mentioned in the “Conclusions” to the study, which focuses on the predictive power of the higher rated funds, thereby missing the point. Why should investors care if five star funds outperform four star funds, when index funds outperform five star funds?

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So the verdict is in: I am not Hyperfit. I would say, judging from my performance in the gym yesterday, that I am not Decentlyfit, or even Slightlyfit. By the end of my forty minute workout, I was a sweating, gasping mess, bewildered and stunned by how Sean Burch’s seemingly innocuous exercises had so quickly demolished me. This was playground stuff, I had thought, the sort of things that six year olds did for fun; things like jumping around, crouching and clapping your hands. Easy.

I should have known better. Sean Burch, the author of Hyperfitness, is a fitness guru who quit his job in finance to pursue his dream of scaling Mount Everest. He did so in 2003, reaching the peak with barely any use of bottled oxygen, and then proceeded to jump rope for a minute—at an altitude of 26, 181 feet. But that’s not all—to warm up for that incredible feat, he scaled mountains in Greenland, Alaska and Tibet, being the first to ever scale a large number of those peaks. Not content to rest on his laurels, he then set Guinness World Records for the fastest Arctic Marathon and the fastest ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Why on earth had I thought that his workout would be easy?