Elusive alpha?

The article discusses why a significant majority of large-cap active funds underperform their benchmarks over a 10-year period, as highlighted by the SPIVA (S&P Indices Versus Active) report. It attributes the difficulty in consistently generating 'alpha' (excess returns) to two main reasons: the narrowing difference in skill levels among portfolio managers due to similar knowledge and publicly available information, and the 'efficiently inefficient' nature of markets where mispricing is quickly corrected by numerous participants.