The CAPM as a Tool to Evaluate Fund Managers Given that the CAPM predicts what a particular asset or portfolio’s expected return should be relative to its risk and the market return, the CAPM can also be used to evaluate the performance of active fund managers. Active fund managers try to outperform the market by selecting stocks in a portfolio based on research and informed opinions. One of the key questions surrounding realized returns is whether the manager of the fund is actually achieving a return higher than what would be predicted by the risk the manager took. The CAPM model gives us an estimate of what the return should have been, given the beta risk of the portfolio. If the realized return is greater than the predicted return from the CAPM model, this points toward “adding value;” if the manager has lower or equivalent returns, she might be “just collecting fees” but adding no investment value.