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July 02, 2020 at 02:32 PM
Just 43% of active funds topped their category benchmark index year to date, Morningstar finds.
“And when you look specifically at how active funds — both stock-pickers as well as bond funds — performed during the very worst of the episode that we experienced in the first quarter, what you saw is that, despite many claims to the contrary, they didn’t necessarily save investors’ bacon,” according to Ben Johnson, director of global exchange-traded fund research for Morningstar.
Comparing the results of all active U.S. stock funds against their Morningstar category indexes from the market’s peak in February to “the depths of the drawdown in late March, what you saw is roughly half of them managed to outperform their category index during that period,” Johnson said in a video posted on the research group’s website earlier this week.
As for fixed income, about a third of active bond funds outperformed their category indexes during this tough stretch.
“This speaks to the fact that many of them were structurally a longer credit risk and also shorter duration during the period where credit risk got absolutely punished and interest rates dropped,” Johnson explained.
The concept that active managers can consistently outperform passive funds in environments like the market crash of earlier this year “belongs in the same category as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny,” he added. “It’s a myth, it’s one that perpetuates itself.”
The myth lives on, according to Johnson, since “people want to believe [in the ability of others], and we want people to ultimately behave well. Because what matters more than anything is the longer-term picture and not just any one air pocket that we might hit in the market.”
Source: Morningstar, 7/1/2020.
