Investing.com - Only 30% of active investment funds focused on buying securities to earn a profit from price increases outperformed their benchmarks in 2024, according to analysts at Bank of America.
In a note to clients on Tuesday, the analysts led by Nigel Tupper found that the median annual relative return of these funds, in which an investment manager picks and chooses securities in a bid to beat a stated benchmark or index, was -2.41%.
The report comes despite global equity markets jumping by around 15.7% in 2024. Stocks in the US in particular were powered by soaring enthusiasm around the applications of artificial intelligence, anticipated interest rate reductions from the Federal Reserve, and hopes for a looser regulatory during the upcoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Despite a somewhat downbeat ending to the year, the benchmark S&P 500 gained 23.3% in 2024 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 28.7%.
The Bank of America analysts argued that "narrow breadth" of the gains in the stock markets "made it difficult for most funds to outperform last year." They noted that the market-cap weighed MSCI AC World Index outperformed the equal-weighed version by a "significant" 12.2%.
They added that just 29% of stocks beat the global index during the year. "All types of funds were impacted," the analysts said, flagging that just 38% of value funds, 28% of growth funds and 31% of yield funds outperformed their benchmarks in 2024.
Over much of 2024, the fortunes of stock markets rose and fell with big-name tech companies like Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), who have been seen as major beneficiaries of bets on artificial intelligence. However, the trend did reverse somewhat following a sell-off in tech names in early August, while investors' desire for less-appealing value and small-cap stocks was whetted by the prospect of expected Fed rate cuts.
(Reuters contributed reporting.)