Posted By 
By Graham Bodel, Chalten Advisors
Special to the Financial Independence Hub
“Not to fear, we have found a manager based in our very own Canada that is able to consistently beat the pack.”
Standard & Poor’s has done a brilliant job over the last few years of shining the light on the fund management industry by publishing its SPIVA (S&P Indices Versus Active Funds) Scorecards, which report on the performance of actively managed mutual funds relative to their benchmark indices.
We’re not spoiling anything by telling you the results don’t usually come out favourably for active managers: the performance data has been fairly consistent and compelling for years.
The latest SPIVA Canada Scorecard for the year ended December 31, 2015 came out on Monday and at first glance there may be reason to cheer, especially for those fund managers focused on domestic stocks.
While 57% might not seem very convincing, it’s certainly a better result than US domestic equity managers, only 25% of whom managed to beat the benchmark last year (Source: SPIVA US Scorecard).
Of course, 2015 was a year where the Canadian stock market performed worse than any other developed market globally in USD terms and was only able to squeak past Russia and Brazil. If you’d been one of the few lucky Canadians to properly diversify outside of Canada last year, you would have been disappointed with active fund management as only 21% of Canadian funds managing International Equities (outside North America) were able to outperform their benchmark.
The longer the time period, the worse the results
