Just one in four active fund managers that invest in large US-listed companies beat Wall Street’s S&P 500 share gauge in 2021, as stockpickers again struggled to match the returns delivered by cheap index trackers following the US equity market.
The blue-chip, broad-based S&P index delivered a return including dividends of 28.7 per cent last year, with strong gains for five tech giants — Meta (formerly known as Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google — together accounting for almost one-third of that performance.
This created a significant hurdle for managers focusing on US companies with strong growth characteristics. Just one per cent of active growth managers outperformed the S&P, according to Bank of America.