Stock market indices won bragging rights for the most part in 2005 by outperforming actively managed funds in six of nine style boxes, but most actively managed funds still beat out the S&P500 for the first time in five years, according to the Standard & Poor's Indices Versus Active Funds Scorecard. SPIVA found that the S&P MidCap 400 did better than 76% of its actively managed peers last year, while the S&P SmallCap 600 beat out 60.5% actively managed small cap funds in 2005.
Says Srikant Dash, an S&P index strategist, "While indices and active funds fought a tough battle in 2005, we see very little consistency in active versus index statistics with annual data."