Actively Managed Funds Beating The S&P 500, But Still Losing Cash To Index Funds

Actively managed mutual funds have done well this year, rising 9.9% through June 10, compared to the S&P 500, which was only up 5.3% over the same period (see WSJ article). This comes after a year in which the average stock fund was down 38.9%, dropping 1.9% more than the S&P 500. What is causing the out-performance? It appears to be growth stocks, which are up approximately 11% this year, compared to less than 1%gain for value stocks. Many widely-held tech stocks, such as Apple (AAPL), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Google (GOOG), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Microsoft (MSFT) have helped juice returns. Nonetheless, even with the current out-performance, active funds are still losing business to index funds as investors continue to remember their poor fund performance in 2008 (really poor in some instances).