Actively Managed Large-Cap Funds Outperform Benchmarks

Standard and Poor's has found that 55.8% of actively managed large-cap funds have outperformed the S&P 500 through the first nine months of this year. But mid- and small-cap funds have not fared so well, with only 27.9% of mid-cap funds besting the S&P MidCap 400 index and 27.7% of small-cap funds trouncing the S&P SmallCap 600.

Past-performance comparisons show that indices continue to outperform the majority of active funds. In the past three years, the S&P 500 has outperformed 69.4% of large-cap funds, the S&P MidCap 400 has outperformed 69.1% of mid-cap funds, and the S&P SmallCap 600 has outperformed small-cap funds by 71.1%. And for the five-year period, the S&P 500 has outperformed 63.6% of large-cap funds, the S&P MidCap 400 has beat 77.5% of mid-cap funds, and the S&P SmallCap 600 has outdone 75.% of small-cap

Srikant Dash, an index strategist at Standard and Poor's, said, "Over longer time horizons, we continue to observe indices outperforming a majority of active funds across most style boxes. We typically see indices beating at least 60% of active managers over five-year horizons."