My assessment of the data is: American has outperformed in all asset types except emerging markets, and Larry creates a portfolio in which the EM shortcomings swamp the rest.In neither case do we have evidence of overall outperformance.
Of the funds presented, AF outperforms Vanguard indexes in 7 of 8 funds and outperforms DFA in 6 of 9.
There are no small-cap funds presented, which I would like to see in order to construct a portfolio. Larry uses the funds to construct a portfolio of 25% US large growth, 25% US large value, 25% International large cap, and 25% emerging markets. With this high exposure to EM (compared to what most investors would put together - for example, Larry himself has only 6.7% of the equity portion in EM in the sample portfolio here: http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/investme ... ct=Swedroe), the underperformance in EM cancels out AF's outperformance in the other three asset classes.
No VG fund is presented for international large cap, but if you include Total Int Stock Index as the closest thing (even though it has some small cap which should help VG) with a 10-year return of 7% and then construct what I would regard as a more reasonable portfolio (if we can't have any small cap) of 30% US LG, 30% US LV, 30% Int large, 10% EM, then what we get is:
American Funds: 6.6%
DFA: 6.2%
Vanguard: 5.7%
That tells a different story.
btw, I have no American Funds, nor do I have any actively-managed funds.