The Aapryl Quarterly Market Insight offers a lens on how active managers in general performed in various markets and sub-segments. Using Aapryl’s proprietary methodology, we measure manager skill by using the manager’s static clone (long term factor profile) as a measure of skill instead of the broad market benchmark. Manager skill is calculated by using the manager’s raw return less their static clone return.
The 3rd quarter of 2025 continued a low quality rally in the U.S. lead by U.S. Small Cap Aggressive Growth with the best peer median group +5.01%, which extended down to U.S. Large Cap Aggressive Growth +4.73%, but did not extend down to Non-U.S. and Emerging Markets. The worst performing peer median was U.S. Small Cap Aggressive Value – 1.25% followed by Non-U.S. Small Cap Aggressive Growth -0.66%.
Below are the top three winners and bottom three losers based on the performance of their respective peer group medians for the prior quarter:
Aapryl Peer Group Manager Skill Performance Matrix
Quarter Ending 9/30/2025
The performance spread between the top and the bottom quartile within their respective peer groups varied for each Aapryl peer group is shown below. This quarter we saw another big spread difference in particular in the Aggressive Growth peer groups. The biggest performance spread between the peer groups top quartile vs bottom quartile were in U.S. Large Cap Aggressive Growth +8.70% following by Global Large Cap Aggressive Growth +7.99%, with the lowest spread occurred in Non U.S. Large Cap High Quality Blend +1.89%.
Top Quartile vs. Bottom Quartile
Quarter Ending 9/30/2025
Fixed Income Manager Performance During the Quarter
Active managers in Fixed Income continue to show performance differences between top and bottom quartile managers. The highest spread this quarter continued to be in EM Bond Intermediate Term All Spread +1.31%, while Short Investment Grade Intermediate Term All Spread Risk had the lowest spread of +0.19%. The EM Bond Intermediate Term All Spread median managers performed the best with +0.87%, while High Yield Short Term All Spread performed the worst during the quarter with -0.22% median return.
Quarter Ending 9/30/2025
