With no reports of funds consistently beating the market in a surprising way.

There’s no consistent way to make money. You can exploit small details about how each market works, but in a short time everyone will notice and copy you. It’s like a market without patents. People talk, the trade ideas spread. Like wildfire. Too fast even for a quant to make sense - good managers can tell if a piece of info is hot. No manager will ever be able to tell whether a stock will outperform.