Will 2017 be the year of the active manager?
18 Jul 17
Within the fund industry, 2017 was widely heralded as ‘a year for active managers’ after a long period when central bank policy and geopolitical concerns had driven asset prices. Click on the slides below to see whether, with more than half of the year gone, active managers across asset classes have been able to beat their benchmarks.
The MSCI Europe has returned 9% year-to-date, driven by improving macroeconomic fundamentals and an increasing sense of political stability on the continent.
European equity funds have reaped the benefits of this, too. But their net returns have slightly lagged the benchmark on average. The average European equity fund has returned 8.5% so far this year, according to an Expert Investor analysis based on Morningstar data.
In fact, this figure has even been skewed to the upside by some funds that showed very strong performance (a detailed analysis of this is to follow on the Expert Investor website soon). Of all European equity funds in the Morningstar sample (with a fund size of more than €100m), 131 have outperformed the index this year, while 216 have underperformed.
As funds have only missed their benchmark performance by 0.5% on average, they have still beaten the MSCI Europe before fees. But have active managers been more successful versus their benchmark than in previous years?
The answer is no: over the past three year-period, European equity funds have made annualised returns of 7.1%. This compares to 7.2% for the MSCI Europe, which is only 10bps per year higher.
