It should come as no surprise that active funds do not outperform their benchmarks over a significant time period, but take a look at the data. This graph shows the percentage of funds in the surviving universe (29% do not survive) that beat their benchmark in consecutive years. In the first year (2004), 33% of the funds were winners, but by year five (2008), only 1.4% of the funds (38 out of 2,619) had consistently outperformed their benchmark. Click here for the slide.