The phrase “past performance is not a guarantee of future results” has never rung more true for active mutual funds. Our semi-annual publication, the Persistence Scorecard, takes a look at the performance of top quartile active funds over three- and five-year consecutive 12-month periods. Based on the most recently released report, out of 265 large cap funds that were in the top quartile as of September 30 2011, only 5.28% (amounting to about 14 funds) remained in the top quartile at the end of September 2013. Only 10.31% of the funds managed to stay in the top quartile in the mid cap space while 8.28% of the small cap funds stayed in the top quartile. The breakdown of each fund category is highlighted in the table below.
Our study finds that performance persistence declined further over a longer-term five year horizon. Only 3.95% of the large cap funds (amounting to approximately 10 funds) and 1.92% of small-cap funds (merely 3 funds) remained in the top quartile at the end of the study period. It is worth noting that no mid cap funds managed to remain in the top quartile.
