Every International Equity fund trailed its benchmark in the six months to June 30
Funds at the top-quartile threshold still fell short of their benchmarks in five of seven Canadian fund categories over the six months to June 30, 2026, while funds at the bottom-quartile threshold trailed by an average of 7.3 percent.
The figures come from the mid-year 2026 S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) Canada Scorecard, published by S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, which measures Canadian actively managed retail mutual funds and exchange-traded funds against category benchmarks using return data from Fundata Canada.
Bottom-quartile shortfalls reached 10.7 percent in Canadian Focused Equity and 12.8 percent in International Equity.
An average of 80 percent of active funds across the seven categories underperformed in the first half of 2026.
International Equity recorded a full sweep, with every fund trailing the S&P EPAC LargeMidCap, which rose 20.8 percent in Canadian dollars.
The scorecard reported that 87 percent of Canadian Equity funds underperformed an S&P/TSX Composite Index that returned 11.2 percent, followed by Canadian Focused Equity at 85.7 percent and Canadian Dividend & Income Equity at 81.6 percent.
US Equity funds underperformed at 79 percent against an S&P 500 that gained 14.1 percent in Canadian dollars, with Global Equity at 69.2 percent and Canadian Small-/Mid-Cap Equity lowest at 57.1 percent.
Over 10 years, S&P Dow Jones Indices recorded underperformance of 100 percent in both Canadian Focused Equity and International Equity, 98.8 percent in Canadian Equity, 98.3 percent in Global Equity, 96.9 percent in Canadian Dividend & Income Equity, 94.3 percent in US Equity, and 88.1 percent in Canadian Small-/Mid-Cap Equity.
On a risk-adjusted basis over the same period, US Equity and International Equity both reached 100 percent.
Merger or liquidation rates ran in single digits across all categories during the six-month period.
Over the 10-year window, 43.9 percent of Canadian Equity funds failed to survive, and 37.5 percent disappeared across all categories.
Energy beat the S&P/TSX Composite by 12.5 percent and Information Technology trailed it by 28.7 percent, the extremes among 11 Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) sectors.
Only Energy, Financials and Utilities outperformed the broad Canadian benchmark.
Five sectors outperformed within the S&P 500, where Industrials led by 10.3 percent and Financials lagged by 11.8 percent.
Dispersion rose across the Canadian and international indices S&P Dow Jones Indices tracks, and a majority of index constituents trailed their own benchmarks, ranging from 50.3 percent in the S&P/TSX Completion Index to 72.6 percent in the S&P EPAC LargeMidCap.
The scorecard uses the opportunity set available at the start of each period as its denominator to correct for survivorship bias.
It excludes pooled funds, segregated funds and other vehicles that do not qualify as retail mutual funds, along with index, leveraged and inverse products.
Fund returns are net of fees and exclude loads, index returns carry no deduction for fund expenses, and all index returns are total returns in Canadian dollars.
