With a few exceptions, Morningstar's most recent semiannual comparison of actively managed versus passively managed funds confirms once more that most active funds don't deliver enough bang after expenses.

The latest Morningstar Active/Passive Barometer report from the Chicago-based investment research company includes data through year-end 2015 that gauges active-manager success by looking at measures that include comparing their returns versus a composite of relevant passive index funds. The report also looked at the importance of fees.

Among the key takeaways: active funds generally underperform passive funds, particularly over longer time periods; active funds have higher mortality rates through mergers and closures; and the higher fees charged by active funds have a strong bearing on their higher failure rates.

“Higher-cost funds are more likely to underperform or be shuttered or merged away and lower-cost funds are likelier to survive and enjoy greater odds of success,” the report said.

Morningstar said the report isn’t trying to settle the active versus passive debate, but it’s clear that active funds have some built-in disadvantages. For example, active managers start off in a hole because their typically higher fund expenses come off the top. As such, the expectation of 'you get what you pay for' is turned on its head.

“You pay Ferrari prices and you're likely to get a lemon,” says Ben Johnson, Morningstar's director of global ETF research. “You pay for a Honda Civic [a low-expense index fund] and you're more likely to get Ferrari performance.

“It will always be difficult for active managers to produce better performance than their index peers,” he adds.

Of course, some active fund categories fare better than others. According to the report, value managers had better odds of long-term success than other types of active funds. In that vein, the lowest-cost mid-value funds experienced the greatest long-term odds of success (72%).

Morningstar says long-term success rates were generally higher among small-cap, mid-cap, foreign, and intermediate-term bond funds.

Morningstar uses “success ratios” to express the performance of funds that survived until the end of the research period and exceeded their index benchmarks in a given category. Some advisors welcomed Morningstar's work on fund survivorship.

Paul Nikolai, director and principal at wealth management firm Aspiriant, says he turns to active management not to swing for the fences but to protect his retired clients' life savings. “Most [retired clients] won't be earning anymore,” he notes. “Our group wants to see a track record [that is] firm, stable, a consistent style, and in the management team, too.”

Does the Morningstar Barometer help? “The gospel it's not, but it's relevant,” Nikolai says. “A good summary, interesting stuff.”

Nikolai says some active managers can beat their benchmarks because they're probably not holding the lower-quality stocks found in a large index. If there are headwinds, he says, he may not want all the mid-cap Chinese stocks an index holds.

Nikolai notes that emerging markets can be particularly volatile, making it a sector where  “active managers can bring a lot of value when markets go haywire.”

That said, he also likes two passive Black Rock iShares ETFs to ward off possible choppy seas in this sector: the MSCI Emerging Market Minimum Volatility ETF (EEMV) and iShares MSCI All Country World Minimum Volatility ETF (ACWV).

At Symphony Financial Planning LLC, founder and president Paul Meyerhoff notes that passive funds can be subject to a sudden overweighting of hot stocks benefitting from a market run-up, and he values the flexibility that active managers can bring to the table.

“Active and passive management are not necessarily mutually exclusive,” he says.