Thanks for your input Blue. Yea I had a windsor fund that when I first bought it...the inception date beat the index pretty well. What I have learned since is it was stupid of me to compare a 1982 inception date to another s&P that maybe started in the 90's. I held it for a few years and it just didn't over perform...or if it did, it didn't over perform that much after expenses counted in.
I just looked again at my Active International fund and I think it does beat the international index pretty handily:
Average annual performancequarter end
Vanguard International Growth Inv Vanguard Total Intl Stock Ix Inv
YTD 12.65% 8.41%
YTD as-of date 03/31/2017 03/31/2017
1-year 16.95% 13.65%
3-year 2.67% 1.02%
5-year 6.82% 4.75%
10-year 3.35% 1.32%
1-, 3-, 5-, 10-year as-of date 03/31/2017 03/31/2017
Since inception 10.30% 4.51%
Inception date 09/30/1981 04/29/1996
The inception date isn't a fair comparison but the 10 year is a clear 2 points ahead which after expenses is an easy 1.5 points. When I go down to 1, 3, and 5 year it's about the same. YTD has been way better in the active fund.
Ok well I just wanted to do a sanity check and make sure I wasn't totally being stupid here. I am also interested in the idea that perhaps Active funds are better for International. I hadn't heard this before but maybe makes some sense. I should also note that this is a pretty small part of my portfolio. I also have another 3-7% in I Fund(TSP) and other total stock market index funds(vanguard).