Explain few Spanish mutual funds outperform their benchmark

Question

Is this true that very little Spanish mutual funds outperform their benchmark? Isn’t this strange?

Answer 1

Yes. Throughout the period 1998 to 2007, only 30 of the 935 mutual funds along with over 10 years of history acquired a higher return than the benchmark used; and only two of them acquired a higher return than the Overall Index of the Madrid Stock Exchange.

In 1998 to 2007 and 1992 to 2007, the average returns on mutual funds were lower than the returns on state bonds at any term seem. Throughout the past 10 years, the average return of the funds was lower than inflation. In spite of these results, on 31st December 2007, 8,264,240 shareholders had €238.7 billion invested into the 2,907 existing investment funds.