S&P Dow Jones Indices has been the de facto scorekeeper of the ongoing active versus passive debate since the first publication of the S&P Indices Versus Active Funds (SPIVA) U.S. Scorecard in 2002. Over the years, we have built on our experience publishing the report by expanding scorecard coverage into Australia, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, Latin America, and South Africa.
The SPIVA India Scorecard compares the performance of actively managed Indian mutual funds with their respective benchmark indices over 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year investment horizons. In this scorecard, we studied the performance of three categories of actively managed equity funds and two categories of actively managed bond funds over the 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year periods ending in December 2019.
The divergence between the performance of the Indian Equity LargeCap and Indian Equity Mid-/Small-Cap fund categories continued into 2019, with the large-cap benchmark, the S&P BSE 100, returning 10.9% and the mid-/small-cap benchmark, the S&P BSE 400 MidSmallCap Index, closing in the red, at -2.1%, during the one-year period ending in December 2019.
Bonds offered strong performance in 2019, aided by the softening of policy rates by the Reserve Bank of India. The S&P BSE India Government Bond Index and the S&P BSE India Bond Index returned 11.10% and 10.84%, respectively, during the one-year period ending in December 2019.
