— Index funds have been a better investment than actively managed funds over the past five years. Or to put it another way: actively managed funds get rejected. It is not worth the money to pay fees to the fund companies. They do not deliver the excess return that I as a saver expect, says Joacim Olsson, CEO of Aktiespararna, to SVT.
Unlike an index fund, which involves investing based on an average of listed companies, an actively managed fund means that a manager chooses which companies the fund should invest in. When asked if it is a matter of skill or luck when it comes to the funds that actually performed better than the average, Joacim Olsson says:
— If you have 100 dart-throwing monkeys who year after year throw darts and flip stocks in that way, some will over time have a good result, even though there may be fees that are deducted all the time.
According to SVT, the large bank Nordea is behind several of the actively managed equity funds that are far down the list after high fees have eaten up the yield. The bank has chosen not to appear for an interview, but writes in an email: “Our ambition is for us in our actively managed funds to beat the index over time, and of course we regret when we do not always succeed in this.”