Wilshire Report: Active Managers Outperforming in Some Categories

Despite the doom and gloom surrounding actively managed funds, a report from Wilshire Associates shows certain market segments where active managers are outperforming benchmarks. As reported in Institutional Investor, Wilshire reviewed active managers’ performance against their benchmarks over the last 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year periods on a gross basis, not taking fees into account. Wilshire found that active managers had a largely positive decade, as most outperformed their indexes in nine of the thirteen strategies analyzed by Wilshire, not accounting for fees. The best performing strategy for active managers over the last decade was emerging markets. Emerging Markets Equity “delivered strong relative performance over the past ten years, with average and median returns of 1.87% and 1.79% versus the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.” The report found that 91% of managers in the emerging market universe have outperformed the index over the latest ten-year period. Other high-performing categories for active managers over the 10-year period were in high-yield and REIT investments.