What do the latest S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) Scorecards say about active management investing expertise? In the "SPIVA U.S. Year-End 2025" Scorecard, Anu Ganti, Davide Di Gioia, Nick Didio and Liam Flaherty review the 2025 performance of active mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETF) per the following SPIVA Scorecard principles:
- Account for discontinued funds, thereby eliminating survivorship bias.
- Compare fund performance to that of a benchmark index matched to the fund investment category.
- When aggregating funds, consider both equal-weighted and asset-weighted average returns.
- Monitor investment style consistency over time to account for fund style drift.
- For a given fund, use only the share class with the most assets to avoid double-counting classes.
- Exclude all index funds, leveraged/inverse funds and other index-linked products.
Using categories and total returns for active U.S. mutual funds and ETFs and their associated S&P indexes during 2001 through 2025, they find that:
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