Passive funds make good bets as large-cap schemes strain to beat the index

New launches within the passive-fund domain have made it possible to build a complete portfolio out of such products

The data in the recently released S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) India scorecard for mid-2019 shows, as it has been indicating for some time now, that large-cap funds are struggling to beat the index. The data on the mid- and small-cap side is not as unequivocal. Over a five-year horizon, only about 27 per cent of funds were beaten by the benchmark, though over the 10-year horizon, the number rises to about 49 per cent, indicating that the investor would have a 50-50 chance of beating the benchmark with an active fund manager. Reading the writing on the wall, fund