Stock Pickers Wanted Volatility. It Made Their Performance Worse
- About 35% of large-cap active funds beat the S&P 500 last year
- Passively managed funds continue to bring in investor cash
This article is for subscribers only.
Stock pickers have long claimed they would prove their mettle when markets became more volatile. That didn’t happen in 2018.
Only about 35 percent of actively managed mutual funds that buy large-cap U.S. stocks beat the S&P 500 Index last year, down from 42 percent in 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. The decline came even as average volatility, as measured by the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, climbed 50 percent.