Active funds beat passive 'marginally' in recent sell-off: iFast

ETF trading volume, turnover may rise as short- term investors divest, bargain hunters jump in

Published Fri, Mar 13, 2020 · 09:50 PM

Singapore

THE performance data of various stock markets over the past three months suggest that the passive indexing strategy has on average performed "marginally worse" than actively managed funds in the recent sell-off, says iFast Corp senior unit trust analyst Shawn Teow.

Over the last month, the SPDR Straits Times Index ETF was the worst performer, by total returns, when compared against a peer group of 11 unique Singapore equity active strategies.

Mr Teow suggests that one reason active strategies have outperformed the benchmarks is because active strategies may not have as much of their portfolios concentrated in a few stocks.

"We observe that active fund managers tend to be relatively underweight the…