S&P Launches Scorecard on Top Funds' Consistency

Standard & Poor's Monday launched a semi-annual fund scorecard on the consistency of top mutual fund performers over three and five consecutive years.

S&P is also going to be tracking persistence, corrected for survivorship bias, through transition matrices for one-, three- and five-year, non- overlapping holding periods.

S&P's new fund scorecard, based on data through May 31, shows that only 10.7% of large-cap funds, 9.2% of mid-cap funds and 11.5% of small-cap funds maintained a top-quartile ranking over three consecutive years.

However, the scorecard also shows that 28.9% of large-cap, 26.4% of mid-cap and 27.9% of small-cap funds maintained a top-half ranking over the same time period.

"Our research suggests that maintaining a top-quartile position over longer horizons is very difficult," said Srikant Dash, S&P index strategist. "Only 3.0% of small-cap funds maintained a top-quartile ranking over two non-overlapping five-year periods, while there were no such funds in the large- and mid-cap category. Repeat top-half performers totaled 18.2%, 12.9% and 17.2% for large-cap, mid-cap and small-cap funds, respectively."

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