SPIVA persistence scorecard: why Robin Wigglesworth says the critics got it wrong
- Robin Powell
- 44 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Active managers blame the scoreboard, not their own performance. But the more they attack the SPIVA persistence scorecard, the more they reveal about the weakness of their own case.
Imagine a football team that loses season after season. Instead of training harder or recruiting better players, they lash out at the league table. They argue that the statistics are unfair, that the scorekeeper is biased, and that the system doesn’t capture their “true potential.” That, in essence, is what the Active Managers’ Council (AMC), working with the Investment Adviser Association, has done in its recent critique of the SPIVA persistence scorecard. Robin Wigglesworth, writing in the Financial Times, took their arguments apart piece by piece. His analysis not only highlights the flaws in their critique, but also exposes the deeper weakness of the active management industry itself.
Why the SPIVA persistence scorecard matters
Investors don’t just want a fund that beats the market once. They want to know if it can keep doing so. That is why the SPIVA persistence scorecard is important. It tests whether success persists. And time after time, the results show the same thing: outperformance rarely lasts.
Here is the first chart to anchor the story:
Long-term odds are stacked against active funds.
Across every category, the majority underperform their benchmark over 10, 15, and 20 years.
What the AMC claims
The AMC’s report tried to argue that the SPIVA persistence scorecard proves nothing useful for investors. They claim that persistence is inherently hard to measure, that survivorship bias distorts results, and that even the best-performing funds will naturally cycle in and out of leadership. They suggest that investors shouldn’t expect persistence — and therefore shouldn’t draw conclusions from the absence of it.
They even attempt a sleight of hand: they highlight that the very best funds over the past 20 years did, on average, beat the S&P 500 by 60 basis points annually. To the casual observer, that sounds impressive. But as Wigglesworth points out, this is cherry-picked data mining: “Even the 25 best-performing funds selected by the IAA to make its point only managed to beat the S&P 500 by 60 basis points a year over the past 20 years! … This is simply blatant data mining."
“ This is simply blatant data mining.” — Robin Wigglesworth
Wigglesworth’s demolition
Wigglesworth is withering. He describes the AMC’s logic as “a bit silly to begin with” and building into “a comically dumb conclusion". His analogy is devastating: it is like picking the 25 highest-scoring strikers in world football, noticing that they don’t score in every single game, and then triumphantly concluding you should never give up on your own misfiring striker. The argument not only misses the point but also undermines itself. If even the very best managers can’t consistently deliver, why believe that ordinary investors can identify them in advance?
He concludes bluntly: “This report was just really annoying … The IAA has done a grossly data mined non-debunking of a little-followed report … We’re going to go out on a limb and predict that this isn’t going to turn back the passive tide.”
“The IAA’s methodology is a bit like selecting the 25 highest-scoring strikers in the world today, noticing that they don’t score in every game and triumphantly declaring that you should never lose faith in your own club’s misfiring striker.” — Robin Wigglesworth
The wipe-out effect
The latest US persistence scorecard found that not a single one of the top-quartile large-cap funds as of 2020 remained in the top quartile by the end of 2024. That is not bad luck; it is structural. It reflects the basic arithmetic of active management: before costs, the group of active funds as a whole matches the market. After costs, they lag. Winners are few, fleeting, and hard to separate from chance.
Most top-quartile funds quickly fall back into mediocrity — or disappear altogether.
The churn is relentless. Funds slide between quartiles. Many close down or change style. Very few stay on top.
“Not a single one of the top-quartile large-cap funds as of 2020 remained in the top quartile by the end of 2024. That is not bad luck; it is structural.”
The global picture
This is not just an American story. European funds show the same pattern: persistence is the exception, not the rule.
Persistence failure is global.
Just 4.2% of US funds and 6.1% of European funds remained in the top half over five years.
The academic verdict
The SPIVA persistence scorecard does not stand alone; it aligns with decades of academic research. Carhart (1997) demonstrated that any apparent persistence is explained largely by momentum and disappears over time. Fama and French (2010) showed that genuine skill is vanishingly rare and statistically hard to distinguish from luck. The persistence scorecard simply makes this evidence accessible to ordinary investors.
The star manager mirage
The AMC’s critique implicitly leans on the idea that exceptional managers exist and can be found. But history tells a different story. Neil Woodford, once celebrated as “the man who made Middle England rich,” ended in scandal and collapse. Anthony Bolton, after decades of outperformance in the UK, faltered badly when he ventured into China. Bill Miller, who famously beat the S&P 500 for 15 consecutive years, then underperformed catastrophically during the financial crisis. These cases don’t disprove the data; they embody it. What looks like skill in one period is often just exposure to a factor or regime that later turns against them.
Flipping the critique
When the AMC argues that persistence is rare and difficult to measure, they aren’t debunking SPIVA — they are proving its point. If you can’t rely on persistence, what is the case for paying high fees for active management? If the odds are so poor, why take the bet at all?
As Wigglesworth notes, the critique reveals an industry more interested in defending its marketing story than in grappling with the evidence. His conclusion is stark: no amount of data mining will turn back the passive tide.
What investors should do
The evidence is overwhelming:
Stop chasing winners. Past performance tells you very little about the future.
Focus on costs. They are the one certainty you can control.
Think globally. Persistence failure is not local — it is everywhere.
Choose broad, low-cost index funds. They capture the return of the market without relying on luck.
The bottom line
Robin Wigglesworth has done investors a service by exposing the weakness of the AMC’s arguments. Active managers can criticise the scorekeeper all they like. But the league table isn’t the problem. The problem is the game they are playing — one where costs drag them down, persistence is rare, and luck disguises itself as skill. The SPIVA persistence scorecard has flaws, but it delivers a clear message: luck doesn’t persist, costs do. For investors who want reliable, repeatable outcomes, the solution is simple: stop betting on strikers who rarely score, and own the whole team instead.
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