The average active manager in the U.S. market underperformed the S&P 500 benchmark for large-cap equity stocks by 0.5 to 1.7 percentage points between 1987 and 1997, the executive summary of a report commissioned by Barclays Global Investors says.
The report, expected to be released by tomorrow, says active managers outperformed index managers in the small-cap arena over the same time period.
On the institutional side, active returns lagged the S&P 500 by between 1.2 and 0.8 percentage points, depending on the source of the data used. According to information provided by Lipper Analytical for the study, U.S. institutional large-cap active managers underperformed the benchmark by 1.2 percentage points; Callan Associates data indicate the underperformance was 0.8 percentage points.
The report was prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers for BGI.