How often do active funds outperform passive funds?
Just one out of every four active funds topped the average of passive rivals over the 10-year period ended June 2023. But success rates vary across categories. Long-term success rates were generally higher among bond, real estate, and foreign-stock funds, where active management may hold the upper hand.
While passive funds still dominate overall due to lower fees, some investors are willing to put up with the higher fees in exchange for the expertise of an active manager to help guide them amid all the volatility or wild market price fluctuations.
More than half of active funds and ETFs, 57%, outperformed their passive counterparts in the year from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023, an improvement from the 43% that did so the previous year, according to a new report from Morningstar.
Less than 10% of active large-cap fund managers have outperformed the S&P 500 over the last 15 years. The biggest drag on investment returns is unavoidable, but you can minimize it if you're smart.
Index funds seek market-average returns, while active mutual funds try to outperform the market. Active mutual funds typically have higher fees than index funds. Index fund performance is relatively predictable; active mutual fund performance tends to be less so.
While actively managed assets can play an important role in a diverse portfolio, Wharton faculty involved in the program say that even large investors often do best using passive investments for the bulk of their holdings.
Passive investing tends to perform better
Despite the fact that they put a lot of effort into it, the vast majority of of active fund managers underperform the market benchmark they're trying to beat. Even when actively managed funds do experience a period of outperformance, it doesn't tend to last long.
In general, actively managed funds have failed to survive and beat their benchmarks, especially over longer time horizons. Only one out of every four active funds topped the average of their passive rivals over the 10-year period ended December 2022.
Key Takeaways. Active risk arises from actively managed portfolios, such as those of mutual funds or hedge funds, as it seeks to beat its benchmark. Specifically, active risk is the difference between the managed portfolio's return less the benchmark return over some time period.
| Ticker | Name | 5-year return (%) |
|---|---|---|
| STSEX | BlackRock Exchange BlackRock | 16.47% |
| USBOX | Pear Tree Quality Ordinary | 16.38% |
| PBFDX | Payson Total Return | 16.30% |
| SSAQX | State Street US Core Equity Fund | 16.20% |
What fund consistently beat the S&P 500?
Rowe Price U.S. Equity Research fund (ticker: PRCOX) is in this exclusive club, having bested—along with a team of about 30 research analysts—the S&P 500 index for the past five years on an annualized basis. U.S. Equity Research is a Morningstar five-star gold-medal fund.
As a group, actively managed funds, after fees have been taken into account, tend to underperform their passive peers.
MarketWatch spotlights VanEck Morningstar Wide Moat ETF (MOAT), consistently outperforming the S&P 500 by targeting companies with long-term competitive advantages or "economic moats."
It's true that over the short term, some mutual funds will outperform the market by significant margins - but over the long term, active investment tends to underperform passive indexing, especially after taking account of fees and taxes.
Although it is very difficult, the market can be beaten. Every year, some managers boast better numbers than the market indices. A small fraction even manages to do so over a longer period. Over the horizon of the last 20 years, less than 10% of U.S. actively managed funds have beaten the market.
The average yearly return of the S&P 500 is 11.13% over the last 50 years, as of the end of December 2023. This assumes dividends are reinvested. Adjusted for inflation, the 50-year average stock market return (including dividends) is 6.99%.
According to a study conducted by Baird, at some point in their careers, virtually all top-performing money managers underperform their benchmark and their peers, particularly over time periods of three years or less.
Too many limitations: Passive funds are limited to a specific index or predetermined set of investments with little to no variance. Thus, investors are locked into those holdings, no matter what happens in the market.
The low fees, transparency, tax efficiency, and buy-and-hold nature of passive funds deeply align with the goals of most long-term investors. These advantages allow more investor capital to work toward building returns rather than being eroded by costs over decades.
In 2022, the US market share of passive funds increased by three percentage points, from 42% to 45%. Over ten years, the data shows a significant increase in market share for passively invested funds, from 24% to 45%.
What is the historical performance of active vs passive funds?
During the 1990s, passive outperformed active five out of 10 times. And over the course of the past 35 years, active outperformed 18 times while passive outperformed 17 times. We've seen that the cyclical nature of active vs. passive investing definitely applies to the Morningstar Large Blend Category.
Mutual funds come in both active and indexed varieties, but most are actively managed.
Financial Advisors' Fees Are Too High to Use Index Funds
Up until this point, the portfolios were made up of various high-fee mutual funds – all of which attempted to outperform the market in one way or another.
Investors can easily rack up high fees, as well as capital gains taxes, that make many actively managed funds a poor alternative to passively managed strategies that can mimic a benchmark at a lower cost. Still, actively managed funds can have a better chance of outperforming during periods of volatility.
The challenge is that as investors recognize a manager's skill, they place more assets under his management. Those additional assets make it harder for the manager to achieve the same level of performance—among other reasons, because the bigger a fund is, the more likely it is to move prices.
