On average, about 70 percent of all actively-managed bond funds underperformed their benchmarks over the five-year period ending in 2012.

FORBES: Active Versus Passive Bond Funds

Finally, where does this leave all of those filings for actively managed ETF products?

FORBES: Fidelity Follows The Green Line Into ETFs With BlackRock

The third planned actively managed ETF will be an all equity portfolio strategy that employs option hedging techniques.

FORBES: Actively Managed Funds On Parade In Orlando

Figure 1 shows that portfolios using actively-managed funds beat the all index fund portfolio only 18 percent of the time.

FORBES: Indexes Beat Active Funds Again in S&P Study

All data includes U.S. passive and actively managed funds.

FORBES: Where The Money's Flowing In 2013

In a nutshell, actively-managed funds continue to underperform in almost all categories and closures remain high.

FORBES: Indexes Beat Active Funds Again in S&P Study

Wade Hansen : I guess with ETF investing, I would start with a caution first: If you look at the ETF universe, more and more ETFs are coming to market all the time, and some managers are bringing them out as actively managed ETFs.

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U.S. equity indices handily beat actively-managed mutual funds across most investment styles, but not all.

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