Taxes Can Be A Real Drag
As the annual S&P Active Versus Passive (SPIVA) scorecard demonstrated, 2015 was another painful year for U.S. actively managed funds. It found that 66.1% of large-cap managers, 56.8% of midcap managers, 72.2% of small-cap managers and 61.9% of real estate investment trust managers underperformed the S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400, the S&P SmallCap 600 and the S&P U.S. Real Estate Investment Trust index, respectively.
Last year, the average U.S. actively managed mutual fund returned -0.41%, 0.89 percentage points below the 0.48% return earned by the Russell 3000 Index. Unfortunately for taxable investors, through the tax impact of Form 1099 distributions, actively managed funds only added insult to injury.
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