I’ve been reading the Indexology blog again.  A few days ago, the topic was the performance of actively managed equity funds managed by European fund managers over the past ten years.

The numbers are almost incomprehensibly bad.

In the “best” category, large-cap European stocks in developed markets there, 55% of the funds underperformed over the past year.  That result deteriorates pretty steadily as time progresses, with the result that on a ten-year view 87% underperform.   .and that’s the best!

The race for last place is almost a dead heat among Global, Emerging Markets and US.  Over the past year, 82% -83% of managers in these categories underperformed.  This result also deteriorates over time.  Over the past ten years, 97% – 98% underperformed.

This is the same pattern as for US active managers   …only worse.

The performance figures are after all fees–management, administrative, marketing…–except for the sales charges levied by traditional brokers.

More importantly, the figures for each period include all funds active during that time, not just the ones that made it through the entire period.  That’s key because over the past ten years about half of the funds active for part of the time were either shut down or (more likely) merged with other funds.  It’s possible that one or two of the defunct funds were great performers but  for some reason couldn’t be sold.  However, in my experience, the overwhelming majority would have been folded because the performance was bad.

Similar figures for the survivors confirms my belief.  The 10-year record for this smaller, hardier, group shows around half the funds outperforming their indices–except for the emerging markets category where over two-thirds of the surviving managers still underperform.

Why do clients put up with this?

One answer is that the absolute returns have been between 5% and 10% yearly in euros.  On the low side that means up by almost 65% over the past decade.  That’s not all that investors could reasonable have expected, but it’s not a loss.  So alarm bells don’t go off when holders get their statements.

Another is that they aren’t.  These sad figures for active managers are the biggest explanation for the popularity of passive products.