Active funds vs the S&P 500: SPIVA data for 2025

In 2025, 79% of actively managed large-cap US stock funds returned less than the S&P 500. Over 20 years, the figure was 92.9%. Those numbers come from the SPIVA U.S. Scorecard, which S&P Dow Jones Indices has published twice a year for 25 years, and they are among the most quoted statistics in investing.

This page collects the key figures from the Year-End 2025 scorecard (data as of December 31, 2025), adds a few numbers we derived from them, and explains what they mean for someone comparing their own portfolio with the index.

How often active large-cap funds trail the S&P 500

SPIVA compares every actively managed US equity mutual fund in a category with that category's benchmark. Fund returns are net of fees (excluding sales loads); index returns carry no costs. A fund counts as an underperformer if its return over the period is below the benchmark's.

1 year78.8%

3 years66.8%

5 years89.0%

10 years85.6%

15 years89.9%

20 years92.9%

The 3-year number is the outlier: it covers 2023–2025 and includes two milder years (65% of large-cap funds trailed in 2024). Over every period of five years or longer, nearly nine in ten funds trailed. According to the report, 2025 was the fourth-worst year for active large-cap managers in the 25-year history of the scorecard; S&P attributes it to "unrelenting large-cap outperformance", which left fewer chances for stock pickers even though dispersion between individual stocks was the highest since 2009.

It isn't only large caps

Fund category	Benchmark	1 year	5 years	10 years	20 years
All domestic funds	S&P Composite 1500	79.8%	91.5%	90.4%	95.0%
All large-cap funds	S&P 500	78.8%	89.0%	85.6%	92.9%
All mid-cap funds	S&P MidCap 400	55.4%	72.3%	81.1%	89.7%
All small-cap funds	S&P SmallCap 600	40.7%	62.7%	76.0%	90.3%
Large-cap growth funds	S&P 500 Growth	95.5%	95.3%	91.7%	99.6%
Large-cap value funds	S&P 500 Value	41.3%	83.0%	88.5%	87.0%
Real estate funds	S&P United States REIT	83.6%	97.4%	84.0%	91.1%

Share of funds underperforming, absolute returns. Source: SPIVA U.S. Scorecard Year-End 2025, Report 1a.

Small-cap managers had a good 2025 — only 40.7% trailed the S&P SmallCap 600 — because the S&P 500 beat the S&P SmallCap 600 by about 12 percentage points, and managers who tilted toward the larger end of their range benefited. Over 20 years the advantage disappears: 90.3% of small-cap funds trailed. Among large-cap growth funds, 99.6% trailed the S&P 500 Growth index over 20 years.

Survivorship: the funds you never see

A fund that is closed or merged into another disappears from most fund screeners, and its weak record goes with it. SPIVA keeps it in the count. That matters because survival rates are low:

Period	Large-cap funds at start	Still alive at end	Kept the same style
5 years	734	86.5%	75.8%
10 years	937	67.0%	62.0%
15 years	1,082	50.6%	54.5%
20 years	760	34.6%	57.4%

Source: SPIVA U.S. Scorecard Year-End 2025, Report 2. "Kept the same style" means the fund stayed in its original style box (e.g. large-cap growth).

Applying the published rates to the 760 large-cap funds that existed at the start of 2006: about 263 were still operating at the end of 2025, and about 54 of the 760 (7.1%) beat the S&P 500 over the full 20 years. These two counts are our own arithmetic on SPIVA's percentages, not figures from the report.

What the gap is worth in dollars

SPIVA also reports average annualized returns. Equal-weighted means every fund counts the same; asset-weighted gives bigger funds more weight and is closer to what the average invested dollar earned.

20 years to Dec 31, 2025	Annualized return	$10,000 grows to
S&P 500 (total return)	11.00%	$80,623
Large-cap funds, asset-weighted	9.62%	$62,776
Large-cap funds, equal-weighted	8.86%	$54,622

The arithmetic: $10,000 × 1.1100^20 = $80,623, and $10,000 × 1.0886^20 = $54,622. The difference, $26,001, is about a third of the index outcome — from a gap of 2.14 percentage points a year. Against the asset-weighted average (9.62%), the gap is $17,847. The index figure assumes dividends are reinvested and ignores costs; a real index fund with a low expense ratio would land slightly below it.

What this means when you judge your own portfolio

The scorecard measures professionals with research teams against a simple benchmark, and most of them lose over long periods. A self-directed portfolio of individual stocks faces the same hurdle. The only fair way to know which side you are on is to measure it the same way: your return over the same dates as the index, with deposits and withdrawals handled correctly.

That is what time-weighted return (TWR) does, and our guide to TWR vs MWR and comparing a portfolio with the S&P 500 shows the formulas. If your money sits at several brokers, first combine the accounts — a comparison based on one account out of three can mislead.

GetHossa does this comparison automatically: it shows your portfolio against what the same contributions would have earned in the S&P 500, over the same days, after you import your broker history. This is a measurement, not a recommendation to buy or sell any fund.

Methodology and sources

• Data: SPIVA U.S. Scorecard Year-End 2025 by S&P Dow Jones Indices (data as of December 31, 2025; fund data from CRSP). Percentages are taken from Report 1a (underperformance, absolute return), Report 2 (survivorship and style consistency) and Reports 3–4 (equal- and asset-weighted average returns).
• Our derived numbers: the $10,000 growth figures compound the published annualized 20-year returns ($10,000 × (1 + r)^20, rounded to the dollar). The counts of 263 surviving and 54 outperforming funds multiply the 760 funds at the start of the 20-year period by 34.61% and by 7.11% (100% − 92.89%), rounded.
• Limits: SPIVA excludes index funds, leveraged and inverse funds, and other index-linked products, and counts only one share class per fund. It reports how many funds trailed, not by how much each did; for that, see the average-return tables. The next SPIVA U.S. scorecards will change these numbers — check the date on any figure you quote.