The surprising truth about 'best' mid-cap funds over 10 yrs

Summary: We tracked what would’ve happened if you kept switching to the previous year’s top mid-cap fund from 2015 to 2025, and the result is both surprising and a little humbling. Spoiler: even an average mid-cap fund would have quietly beaten this strategy over the decade, with no stress, no churn and relatively much less paperwork. We’ve all been there. You open a fund ranking list, see a mid-cap fund that delivered a mind-boggling 50, 60, even 90 per cent returns in the past year, and think, “This is it, this is my ticket to wealth.” It feels logical. After all, why wouldn’t you want to put your money in the fund that’s “proven” itself? But investing isn’t cricket highlights; it isn’t about who hit the biggest six last year. While chasing top performers can feel exhilarating in the short term, in reality, it often means buying into funds after they’ve had their big run and just in time for them to cool off. The result? Lots of activity, very little advantage. Let’s prove this with real data. The ‘best fund every year’ experiment Say you started investing in 2015. Being a performance-focused investor, you put your money in an active mid-cap fund that was the best performer of the previous 12 months. 2015: You would have p