Real funds, ten years to June 2026
Only 1 in 4 active funds survived the decade and beat the index fund.
25%of all active funds survived and beat
5%of US large growth funds did
33%of the cheapest fifth of funds did
The fund graveyard
Pick a fund in 2016. Is it still alive?
100 active funds start the decade, each run by a pro who charges a fee. Tap one to make it yours, then play the ten years.
2016100 funds open
No fund picked yet. Tap a square, or press play and we pick one for you.
Now look at the brochure
Fund companies show you the funds that are still open. The buried ones drop out of the numbers.
of all 100 that started survived and beat
Why most funds end up here
Each year every fund here gets a result that is pure luck, minus its fees. Nobody in this graveyard has any skill. Good years and bad years still pile up into stars and duds.
The duds get closed or merged into a sister fund. Their record disappears. What is left looks better than the whole class ever did.
This is not a cartoon
Morningstar counts every US active fund, dead or alive. Over the ten years to June 2026, just 25% survived and beat a cheap index fund. For big US growth funds it was 5%.
S&P checks which funds disappear. Funds in the bottom quarter were more than twice as likely to be merged or closed within five years: 23% against 10% for the top quarter.
Now picture an AI model pitched as a fund manager. It will be compared with the survivors. Ask about the ones that were switched off.
Before you buy any track record, ask: how many started, and where are the rest?
Sources
- Morningstar, US Active/Passive Barometer, midyear 2026 (August 2026): 25% of active strategies survived and beat their average passive peer over the 10 years through June 2026; 33% of the cheapest fifth of funds did.
- Brian Paoli, "Active Fund Manager Success Rates Ticked Up in 2026, but Passive Funds Still Hold the Advantage", Morningstar, August 6, 2026: a 5% ten-year success rate for US large growth funds.
- Jeffrey Ptak, "Have We Been Too Hard on Active Funds?", Morningstar, June 8, 2026: why funds that were merged or closed count as failures.
- S&P Dow Jones Indices, U.S. Persistence Scorecard Year-End 2025: 23% of bottom-quarter domestic equity funds merged or liquidated within five years, against 10% of top-quarter funds.
- The funds here are made up. Each year a fund's result against the index is luck, a swing of about 4 points, minus 0.6 points of fees and costs. Funds close at S&P's rates: the bottom quarter at the 23% rate, the rest at 10%. Set up this way, about 25 in 100 survive and beat, as in Morningstar's count.