activelymanaged mutual funds in the us weren’t ready for the stockmarket’s “big rally” in the first quarter according to bofa global research the rally “caught active funds off guard” with just 33 of largecapitalization funds beating their russell 1000 benchmarks in the first quarter bofa equity and quant strategists led by savita subramanian said in an april 4 note that was their “worst quarterly hit rate” since the fourth quarter of 2020 they said the us stock market rose in the first three months of 2023 including in march despite the volatility sparked by the sudden collapse of silicon valley bank and signature bank that month the sp 500 a gauge of largecap stocks in the us rose 7 in the first quarter while the technologyheavy nasdaq composite jumped 168 to score its biggest quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2020 beyond active mutual funds having a tough time outperforming in the first quarter “hedge funds also struggled especially the leaders of 2022” the bofa strategists said “macro funds fell 6 the worst hedge fund group” of the first quarter macro systematic funds sank 67 in march for their worst monthly performance in more than five years according to the note these funds became the bottomperforming group among hedge funds this year down 58 after ranking as the top performers in 2022 bofa found us stocks were trading mixed wednesday afternoon as investors digested fresh economic data that included an adp report showing weakerthanexpected growth in privatesector jobs in march the dow jones industrial average djia was up 03 while the sp 500 spx fell 03 and the nasdaq comp shed 12 according to factset data at last check value stocks were outperforming growth equities in wednesday afternoon trade with the russell 1000 value index rlv up 01 while the russell 1000 growth index rlg dropped 11 factset data show at last check but growth stocks trounced value in the first quarter the russell 1000 growth index soared 141 over the first three months of 2023 to surpass the russell 1000 value index’s 62 gain according to factset data read ‘slim majority’ of activelymanaged us largecap equity mutual funds fail to beat sp 500 in 2022