In June 2022, DFA released a study of investment returns called The Fund Landscape. It found (as always) that past performance is not a reliable predictor of future performance—and demonstrated this by reviewing the performances of US Mutual Funds and ETFs. These findings are consistent with other studies (see SPIVA).
A mere 18 percent of the 2,813 equity funds that existed at the start of this time period survived—only 44 percent made it to their end date.
Only 21 percent of equity fund performance was consistently in the top 25 percent during two periods. You would expect about one quarter of top-quartile performers to outperform their peers, thus showing that past performance is not a reliable predictor of future results.
Active managers claim they can find mispricing and market anomalies. The evidence, however, does not support this assertion: Investors are better off buying a broad market index fund that ignores these claims.