S&P 500 Momentum

The point: beating the index is hard

According to S&P's SPIVA scorecards, over 10 to 20 years around 85 to 95% of actively managed US large-cap funds have returned less than the S&P 500. This page runs one simple active strategy live so you can watch that play out. If it trails the index, that is exactly what the research predicts, and a cheap passive index fund is usually the smarter default.

And this page is generous to the active side: it charges no fees, trading costs, or taxes, so what you see is a best case. Those costs are a big reason active loses in real life, so with them the gap only gets wider.