Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Is there data and proof that a diversified portfolio can generate higher returns than the S&P 500 Index?
Is it POSSIBLE? Of course. I don't even need to do any research to prove that. Just some mathematical reasoning: Take the S&P 500. Find the performance of each stock in that list over whatever time period you want to use for your experiment. Now select some number of the best-performing stocks from the list -- any number less than 500. By definition, the X best must be better than or equal to the average. Assuming all the stocks on the S&P did not have EXACTLY the same performance, these 10 must be better than average. You now have a diversified portfolio that performed better than the S&P 500 index fund. Of course as they always say in a prospectus, past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.  It's certainly possible to do. The question is, if YOU selected the stocks making up a diversified portfolio, would your selections do better than an index fund?