Have large-cap active funds come back to life?

"Is investing in large-cap active funds still worthwhile?" This was the title of our previous story where we compared them with the Nifty 50 index over the last five years. Our analysis stated that large-cap active funds increasingly look like a passive fund, charge you more and give lesser returns. In other words, they lost the plot. It is indeed a fact that large-cap active funds typically charge a higher expense ratio, a characteristic common to most active funds. However, the year 2023 has surprisingly seen the pendulum swing in their favour, particularly in terms of returns. A little backstory The performance of large-cap active funds, until this year, compared to the Nifty 50 index, had painted a grim picture. It indicated that opting for index funds might be a more reliable strategy than investing in large-cap active funds and constantly striving to outperform the market. Over the span of the last five years, from 2017 to 2022, there was a noticeable dearth of large-cap active funds that managed to beat the Nifty 50 benchmark index. In fact, a significant number of them fell short, with the year 2018 emerging as a particularly disma