The full infographic is here: (http://moneyning.com/investing/how-do-you-pick-mutual-fund-for-your-portfolio/), which advocate looking for funds with low fees because of the following graph.
The correlation is striking for many other types of funds, but the usual caveat that correlations don’t equal causation applies. The data source appears to be from Lipper, 2013.
Assume for the moment that the relationship is true (or think that we’re just interested in a forecast). The scale of the graphs make the comparison slightly more difficult, but by eyeballing the US government and REIT graphs, I would guess the US government slope is about -1/0.65 = -1.54, and the REIT slope is about -3/1.75 = -1.71 –- if you were to run an OLS regression. Note that the slope of the OLS line would tell you how much extra return you can get if you find an alternative fund in the category with lesser expense. So you lose less return with REIT funds than with US Government funds by going for a fund with higher expense ratio.
This suggests perhaps that skills of the fund managers plays a very smaller role for US Government funds than REIT funds, or that return for skillfully in buying and selling the right asset at the right times yields relatively little return.
Hattip: http://lifehacker.com/the-first-number-you-should-look-for-when-choosing-a-mu-511049734