It all comes down to a very simple equation.
The average investor earns the average returns of the market minus costs(and taxes).
Vanguard index funds = lowest cost 9.99999999999/10. (There are a couple exceptions.... not many.)
As I noted before the American Funds fund has a really high hurdle to clear. It has high costs, and do to all the trading some serious tax disadvantages. It has to outperform the market by a decent amount(1.5-2%, my estimates) given its high expenses and tax difficulties. This is pretty hard to do.
So go with the index fund.
If you really want an active fund to get oogly eyes over VPMAX(or VPMCX; its the same fund) is the supermodel in a bikini. Since she is closed she is just like a supermodel in a bikini. You can look all you want, but you can't have her. (Closed fund)
Keep in mind that chart is scaled. So the the 10k grows to a total dollar figure of 490k for Primecap and that is larger than the SP500(253k), and the Large growth category(172k) COMBINED! It just about doubled the SP500 over that time frame. Part of the reason Primecap can pull that off is Vanguard shut it down before it outgrew itself. It also has low costs for an active fund(0.35% for admiral share), and it has very low turnover(5%). This makes it low cost, tax efficient, and since Vanguard shuts it down anytime fund inflows run the risk of hurting performance it is allowed to focus on what is does best. Many funds just want to bring in more assets under management at any cost... even when they ran out of things to invest in.... which kills future performance.
VPMAX is not something to aspire to. It is the exception to the rule. It is breaking all the rules that active funds normally follow. They normally chase AUM; Vanguard prevents Primecap from falling into this trap. Active funds are normally expensive; Primecap is a Vanguard fund... low cost. Active funds normally have high turnover and because of that are very tax inefficient; Primecap has a lower turnover than some index funds! I think when people buy active funds they 'think' they are getting something like Primecap. The problem is that they are getting expensive tax inefficient funds that are just using marketing to try and drag in more AUM(like ANEFX).
Since you can't have Primecap* you might as well index.
*I am 100% index funds. The only active funds that I would even consider owning are Primecap, Capital Opportunity, and Primecap Core. All of these funds are run by the same firm, all sold by Vanguard, and all meet the previous definitions of low cost, low turnover, and Vanguard closes them when assets start coming in too fast...... All 3 are currently closed to new investors.