I don't have the figures on hand but here in Australia over a 7-10 year period you find that the vast majority of actively managed funds don't actually outperform their benchmark index. Returns usually are consistent with the overall return of the index. Only a few funds manage to actually beat their index. This is very important to remember when picking funds. You need to establish what your investment time frame is. Most funds specify that a 7 year investment period is recommended.
If you can actively manage your fund portfolio you may be able to acheive above benchmark returns. This however is beyond the time and effort of most people, unless you pay a financial adviser to manage your funds but that costs more on top of what you pay for the funds themselves!
ETF's are the best option for those who don't want to fork out money to advisers. You'll be better off just buying into one of these funds and letting it run cause most of the time you can be relatively certain that you will get at least an index return!
Funds do have some great financial startegies attached to them however which make them great tools for playing around with your cash flows but I wont get into that now
