SUMMARY
- S&P Dow Jones Indices has been the de facto scorekeeper of the ongoing active versus passive debate since the first publication of the SPIVA® U.S. Scorecard in 2002.
- The SPIVA Japan Scorecard reports on the performance of actively managed Japanese mutual funds against their respective benchmark indices over 6-month and 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year investment horizons.
- In this scorecard, we evaluated the returns of more than 743 Japanese large- and mid-/small-cap equity funds, along with more than 681 international equity funds investing in global, international, and emerging markets, as well as U.S. equities.
- Drawdowns were seen in domestic and foreign equity benchmark indices in the first half of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Japanese mid- and small-cap and emerging market equity indices suffering bigger losses.
- The majority of Japanese equity funds beat their respective benchmarks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, while the relative performance of foreign equity funds was disappointing. Over longer time periods, we also observed that domestic equity funds tended to have better performance than foreign equity funds compared with their respective benchmark indices.
