Active Fund Underperformance (SPIVA) Statistics (2026)

SPIVA, the S&P Indices Versus Active scorecard, is the definitive study of how active fund managers stack up against the market. Twice a year, S&P Dow Jones Indices measures the percentage of actively managed funds that trailed their benchmark index, across categories and time horizons.

It is the cleanest answer to a simple question: if you pay someone to beat the market, how often do they? The answer, consistently, is that most do not.

In 2025, 79% of active large-cap US equity funds underperformed the S&P 500, up from 65% in 2024 and the fourth-worst reading in the scorecard's 25-year history (see the chart below). In the first half of 2026, with mid and small caps leading, the rate eased to 67%, still a majority.

This is not a one-off. Over the 24-year history of SPIVA, an average of about 64% of large-cap funds have trailed the index in any given year.

The longer the horizon, the harder active management gets. Large-cap funds trailing the S&P 500 climb from about 79% over one year to 93% over 20 years as of the end of 2025 (see the chart below).

Short-term luck fades; over a full investing lifetime, beating the index becomes a near-impossibility for the typical fund.

It is not just large-caps. Over the 20 years to 2025, roughly 90% or more of active funds trailed their benchmark in every major US equity category, and 95% of all domestic equity funds lost to the S&P Composite 1500 (see the chart and table below).

Emerging-market funds were close behind, with about 94% trailing over 20 years.

The one category where active managers occasionally shine is small-caps. In 2024 only about 30% of small-cap funds underperformed, and in 2025 about 41% did, both minority readings, since small, less-covered stocks offer more room for research to add value.

But the edge is unreliable: in the first half of 2026, when small caps rallied, 69% of small-cap funds trailed, and over 20 years about 90% still trailed, essentially the same as everyone else.

Style matters at short horizons but not long ones. In 2025, only about 41% of large-cap value funds trailed their benchmark, while about 96% of large-cap growth funds did (see the table below).

Over 20 years the differences wash out: about 99.6% of large-cap growth funds and 87% of large-cap value funds trailed their style benchmark.

The pattern holds worldwide. Over the 15 years to 2025, about 96% of global funds, 93% of international funds, and 90% of emerging-market funds trailed their benchmarks (see the table below).

Short-run results swing widely. In 2025, 70% of international small-cap funds trailed, but in the first half of 2026 only 35% did, and only 38% of emerging-market funds trailed, among the best readings of any category. International small-cap still has the lowest long-run rate of the foreign categories, at about 79% over 15 years.

Fixed income results swing more than equities. In 2025, an average of 70% of active bond funds trailed their benchmark across categories, worse than the 62% for equities, and emerging-market debt was the only category where a majority beat (see the table below). In the first half of 2026 the bond average fell to 38%.

Over longer periods, most bond categories converge toward underperformance, with all three government categories at 92% to 100% trailing over 10 years.

Picking last year's winner does not work. In S&P's Persistence Scorecard, 0% of the top-quartile US equity funds of 2021 stayed in the top quartile through 2025 (see the table below).

Even the looser test, staying in the top half for four more years, was cleared by only about 8% of all domestic funds and 4.5% of large-cap funds, against 6.25% expected by pure chance. Shorter streaks were better: 29% of 2023's top-quartile large-cap funds held that rank through 2025. Past performance does not reliably persist.

Taxes widen the gap further. S&P's After-Tax Scorecard found the median active fund trailed the S&P 500 by up to 4.4% a year after tax, across every horizon.

Active funds trade more, generating taxable capital gains distributions that index funds largely avoid, so the after-tax shortfall is even larger than the pre-tax one.

Survivorship bias hides how bad the record is. Only about 35% of large-cap funds and 37% of all domestic equity funds survived the full 20 years to 2025; roughly two-thirds were merged away or liquidated (see the table below).

The funds that disappear are disproportionately the poor performers, so the headline underperformance rates actually understate how often active management has failed.

The math is unforgiving. Active investing is close to a zero-sum game before costs, so after fees and trading expenses the average active dollar must trail the average passive dollar, a point made decades ago by William Sharpe.

Markets are also highly efficient: with so many professionals competing, durable information edges are rare, and the fees charged to chase them compound against investors year after year.

The practical takeaway is why low-cost index funds have won so much market share: over the long run, buying the whole market cheaply has beaten the large majority of expensive attempts to outsmart it.

None of this means beating the market is impossible, only that it is rare, hard to identify in advance, and not something the odds favor. For most investors, a low-cost, diversified index approach is the higher-probability bet.