Invesco leads the latest three-year ranking as active managers continue to face a challenging environment.
Our latest (three years ended March 31, 2026) Essentia Behavioral Alpha Benchmark ranking shows continued pressure across the ranked universe, even as the headline measure improved modestly. For the 192 portfolio managers in our ranking (our largest universe to date), the median Behavioral Alpha Score — which measures the value added through decision-making, when compared with what would have been achieved by chance — rose to 48.1, up from 47.7 at December 31, 2025.
Most key metrics remained weak. Overall, just 37.0% of portfolios added value through their decision-making, down from 39.3% in the prior assessment. Decision hit rates remained low, with only 18.8% of managers adding value through half or more of their decisions. Payoff breadth held near the value-add threshold: 50.0% of portfolios achieved payoff ratios above 100%, compared with 50.3% at December 31, 2025.
At the top of the ranking, however, results strengthened. Invesco Value Opportunities Fund remained the top-ranked portfolio for the second consecutive quarter, with a Behavioral Alpha Score of 79.7, up from 75.1 in the prior assessment. Invesco Small Cap Value Fund rose to No. 2 with a score of 70.3 (up from 68.9 last quarter), giving Invesco the top two positions in the ranking. The latest results reinforce the same pattern we have seen in recent rankings: while the median manager has been struggling to add value, the best performers continue to distinguish themselves by the quality of their decisions over time.
About the Behavioral Alpha® Benchmark
The Essentia Behavioral Alpha Benchmark (EBAB) is the investment management industry’s only systematic assessment of decision-making skill. Unlike traditional rankings based on past returns, EBAB evaluates how portfolio managers make investment decisions over a 36-month period, isolating skill from luck and market movements.
Using proprietary decision attribution analytics, the ranking assesses managers across seven key decision types. A manager’s Behavioral Alpha Score (BA Score) is calculated based on their hit rate (percentage of decisions that add value) and payoff ratio (the magnitude of good vs. bad decisions).
The five highest-scoring managers, represented by the magenta dots, are those towards the upper-right on this frontier diagram — furthest away from 0,0.
A Behavioral Alpha Score above 50 indicates consistent value-additive decision-making. And recent research shows that managers with 3-year BA Scores over 50 are 1.5x as likely to outperform their own benchmarks over the subsequent 12 months as managers with BA Scores less than 50. Managers who have demonstrated good decision-making over the last 3 years have been more likely to go on to outperform.
It is possible for a manager who has been underperforming to have a BA Score over 50, implying that they are undervalued by performance-based metrics. Likewise it is possible for a manager who has been outperforming to have a BA Score under 50 — in other words, to have gotten lucky. That has implications for fund managers and fund selectors alike. Essentia is carrying out further research in this area, so watch this space!
Top 5 Managers for the 3 Years to 31 March 2026
The most recent 36-month assessment concluded on March 31, 2026, evaluating the demonstrated decision-making skill of 163 active equity mutual fund and investment-trust portfolio managers using the Behavioral Alpha Score. The Top 5 managers are as follows:
| Rank | Manager(s) | Portfolio (Benchmark) |
| 1 | Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Mueller |
Invesco Value Opportunities Fund |
| 2 | Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Mueller |
Invesco Small Cap Value Fund |
| 3 | Janakiraman Rengaraju Rajasa Kakulavarapu Sandeep Manam |
Franklin India Flexi Cap Fund |
| 4 | Team Managed | ARGA Emerging Markets Equity Fund |
| 5 | Robert Choi, Al Chan, Chris Richey, Kevin Hill and Ron Dornau | Silvercrest International Small Cap Value Fund |
Key Takeaways and Notable Trends
- Invesco led the ranking. Invesco Value Opportunities Fund remained No. 1, while Invesco Small Cap Value Fund rose to No. 2. That gave Invesco the top two positions in the latest assessment, our largest ever at 192 portfolios, even as aggregate decision-making outcomes across the broader universe remained weak.
- Decision-making outcomes remained under pressure. The median Behavioral Alpha Score rose modestly to 48.1, but stayed below the value-additive threshold of 50. Fewer than 4 in 10 portfolios added value overall, and decision hit rates remained low, with only 18.8% of managers adding value through half or more of their decisions.
- Payoff breadth stayed near the value-add threshold. Half of portfolios achieved payoff ratios above 100%, nearly unchanged from 50.3% at December 31, 2025. For an increasing number of managers, the challenge remains not only how often decisions add value, but whether good decisions add enough value to offset the bad ones.
- The Top 5 continues to rotate, but the broader leadership group shows persistence. Silvercrest International Small Cap Value and ARGA Emerging Markets Equity, for example, both returned to the Top 5 this quarter after remaining within the broader Top 15, consistent with Essentia’s research showing that Behavioral Alpha Scores exhibit statistically significant temporal persistence.
These results are publicly available through Essentia’s Behavioral Alpha Benchmark app, which provides access to all mutual funds, active ETFs, and SMAs in the Benchmark database. With the Insight Pro tier, users can drill down on a portfolio’s Behavioral Alpha Score for deeper visibility into which decision types have been adding and destroying the most value.
Portfolios with Behavioral Alpha Scores > 50 (which appear to the right of the dotted line) have managers who have been adding value through their overall decision-making over the last three years. Those with scores < 50 (to the left of the line) have been destroying value.
How the BA Score is Calculated
The Behavioral Alpha Score (BA Score) is determined using a systematic approach that evaluates investment decision-making skill over a 36-month period. The methodology isolates skill from market conditions by analyzing managers’ hit rates (the percentage of value-added decisions) and payoff ratios (the relative impact of good versus bad decisions).
Each manager’s score is benchmark-adjusted and calculated based on seven key decision types:
- Stock selection – Did the manager choose stocks that outperformed the benchmark over the last 3 years?
- Entry timing – Did the manager add value through the precise timing of their entry?
- Sizing – Did the manager add value through capital allocation decisions, compared to running an equally-weighted portfolio?
- Scaling in – Did the manager add value through the way they scaled into their positions, or would a basic algorithm have done just as well?
- Size adjusting – Did the manager make beneficial mid-position adjustments?
- Scaling out – Did the manager add value through the way they scaled out of their positions, or would a basic algorithm have done just as well?
- Exit timing – Did the manager add value through the precise timing of their exits?
Aggregate trends from our prior rankings (all based on 36-month timeframes):
| Median BA Score | Percent of portfolios adding value |
Percent of portfolios with a hit rate over 50% |
Percent of portfolios with a payoff over 100% |
|
| Ending 2026-Q1 | 48.1 | 37.9% | 18.8% | 50.0% |
| Ending 2025-Q4 | 47.7 | 39.3% | 19.0% | 50.3% |
| Ending 2025-Q3 | 49.3 | 48.1% | 21.8% | 56.4% |
| Ending 2025-Q2 | 50.6 | 53.4% | 21.4% | 67.9% |
| Ending 2025-Q1 | 47.8 | 40.2% | 22.1% | 51.6% |
| Ending 2024-Q4 | 48.7 | 43.0% | 31.7% | 55.7% |
| Ending 2024-Q3 | 49.3 | 48.3% | 22.5% | 57.3% |
| Ending 2024-Q2 | 50.3 | 55.7% | 21.6% | 63.6% |
| Ending 2024-Q1 | 51.4 | 56.9% | 25.0% | 65.3% |
| Ending 2023-Q4 | 50.3 | 52.5% | 30.8% | 62.5% |
| Ending 2023-Q3 | 50.6 | 53.3% | 24.4% | 67.8% |
| Ending 2023-Q2 | 50.9 | 56.5% | 28.2% | 71.8% |
| Ending 2023-Q1 | 51.6 | 63.6% | 28.4% | 79.5% |
| Ending 2022-Q4 | NA | 46.7% | 23.3% | 63.3% |
| Ending 2022-Q1 | NA | 43.4% | 18.4% | 68.4% |
About Essentia Analytics
Essentia Analytics is the leading provider of behavioral data analytics services to professional investors and allocators of capital. Led by a team of experts in investment management, technology and behavioral science, Essentia combines next-generation decision attribution analytics technology with human coaching to help both equity fund managers and allocators identify investment skill and bias — and capture performance that was previously being lost to decision-making deficiencies.
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