Reports: Small and Mid-Cap Managers Score over Passive in 2019

November 19, 2019

The Financial Times is reporting that a surge in performance of small-cap and mid-cap funds may yet show signs of life for active management. Citing data from S&P Global, the FT reports that for the 12-month period ended in June 2019, 60 percent of actively managed small- and mid-cap funds beat their indexes, an increase from the 10-year average of 3 percent. According to a report from S&P Indices Active Versus Passive scorecard “the magnitude of outperformance was significant.” Other data from the SPIVA U.S. Mid-Year 2019:

For the one-year period ending in June 2019, 71% of domestic equity funds underperformed the S&P Composite 1500, slightly more than the previous report’s 69%. The majority of large-cap (70%) and multi-cap (72%) funds lagged their benchmarks.
Mid-cap and small-cap active funds performed relatively better; approximately 64% of active managers in both categories beat their benchmarks for the one-year period.
88% of mid-cap growth managers beat the S&P MidCap 400 Growth (up 1.9%)
85% of small-cap growth managers beat the S&P SmallCap 600 Growth (down 2.3%) for the one-year period ending in June 2019.