About 88% of actively managed U.S. large-cap funds underperformed the S&P 500 over the 15 years through December 2023, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices' SPIVA U.S. Scorecard (year-end 2023 edition, published 2024). Roughly six in ten lagged the index over the single year of 2023 alone, continuing a pattern the scorecard has documented for more than two decades.
NewsJay publishes information, not investment advice, and past performance is labeled as past — it is never projected forward here.
What did the scorecard actually measure?
The SPIVA U.S. Scorecard compares actively managed mutual funds against their stated benchmarks after fees, accounting for fund closures and mergers that flatter naive survivor-only comparisons. Over the 15-year window ended December 2023, roughly nine in ten large-cap funds trailed the S&P 500; mid- and small-cap categories showed similar shortfall rates, per the same scorecard. The persistent causes it names are ones long-horizon investors recognize: fees, cash drag, and the difficulty of picking winners repeatedly.
What does this mean for a long-term investor?
The evidence-based playbook does not say active management cannot win; it says winners are hard to identify in advance and hard to repeat. For a long-term investor, the scorecard's relevance is procedural: know what any fund charges, compare it against its true benchmark, and treat a manager's past streak as past. The SEC's investor materials (investor.gov) make the same point about benchmarking funds against an appropriate index.
Two mechanics do most of the damage. Fees compound against the fund every year, so a manager must first outperform by the fee just to draw level. And active funds hold a cash cushion for redemptions, which lags behind in a rising market — a drag the index never carries.
The scorecard also tracks persistence: funds that landed in the top quartile in one period were statistically no more likely than chance to repeat over the following period, per the companion persistence reports S&P publishes alongside it. That finding, more than any single year's shortfall rate, is what makes the pattern durable rather than anecdotal.
What remains unknown is whether the next 15 years will look like the last. The scorecard documents a past pattern — it promises nothing about the managers of 2026.
For more context, read How S&P 500 Index Additions and Deletions Actually Work.
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