The Traderszone Network

According to a new report from Standard & Poor’s, more than 70% of all actively managed U.S. equity mutual funds trailed their benchmarks for the five years ending 2008. The S&P’s Index Versus Active Fund Scorecard (SPIVA) showed that 71.9% of actively managed large-cap funds lagged the S&P 500, while 75.9% of actively managed mid-cap funds trailed the S&P MidCap 400. In addition, 85.5% of actively managed small-cap funds fell behind the S&P SmallCap 600.

The only bright spot was Large-Cap Value ETFs, which did better than the S&P 500 Value index in 2008, with 78% of actively managed funds beating their benchmark. S&P says the results were consistent with the previous five-year cycle which ran from 1999 to 2003. The results of the study prompted an S&P spokesperson to speculate that the belief that bear markets strongly favor active management is largely a myth.

Check out IndexUniverse.com for more on this story.

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