The first active stock exchange-traded funds have passed their three-month anniversaries. And along with other more active ETFs on the market, they've been handily beating their passive indexing rivals.

"Obviously, it's a pretty short time period to consider the past three months as a valid data set," said Ed McRedmond, Invesco PowerShares' executive vice president of portfolio strategies. "But it's an encouraging sign starting right out of the box."

Two of the first active ETFs that launched in mid-April are run by AER Advisors for Invesco PowerShares. The advisory firm uses a quantitative-based methodology for developing so-called "Alpha" rankings on stocks. The criteria used include factors such as strong earnings growth, low valuations and positive money flow.

"We're getting an abundance of stocks that look attractive, which is an indication that the market's trading cheap right now," said David O'Leary, chief investment officer at AER Advisors.

That's proving quite beneficial for investors in the PowerShares Active Alpha Multi-Cap Portfolio (NYSEArca: PQZ). In the past three months through Aug. 1, it had lost 5.90% vs. the 10.2% drop by the S&P 500 tracking SPDRs (AMEX: SPY).

Since PQZ has a mandate to range where it wants, McRedmond suggests that a better way to measure its performance is to compare how actively managed multi-cap mutual funds are weathering conditions. Along those lines, the average multi-cap core mutual fund lost 9.20% in the past three months through Aug. 1, according to Lipper data.

Flexible Universe

"We're using the 2,000 largest stocks by market-cap size," said O'Leary. "So we've got a flexible universe that we update every week. That gives us an advantage over the indexes that are basically stuck in a group of stocks."

PQZ is overweighting Energy (25.8%), Tech (27.8%) and Materials (17.53%). It's significantly underweighting Industrials (2.86%) and Financials (9.49%). The ETF also doesn't hold any Consumer names.

"We can change up to three stocks a week on a 50-stock portfolio like the one we use with PQZ," said O'Leary. "But that's a self-imposed limit. If you actually changed three stocks per week over the course of a year, that would be over a 300% turnover rate."

While he says PQZ's portfolio has shown much less churning of names than its maximum range, "our ability to eliminate lagging stocks when needed has been the key this year."

Another active ETF that came out in mid-April is the PowerShares Active Mega Cap (NYSE: PMA). It's run by parent Invesco's institutional fund managers. Their favorite 30 or so mega-cap stocks go into the portfolio, which uses the Russell 200 as its benchmark. Unlike the AER-managed funds, PMA can trade as necessary, although PowerShares has said that it anticipates executing trades only on a monthly basis.

PMA had returned -8.3% in the past three months heading into August. At the same time, the Russell Top 200 index was down 8.79%. Interestingly enough, the Russell Top 50 index—an even closer-fitting benchmark—had lost 9.29% in that period.

While the Russell indexes have been big into Financials and Consumer Discretionary, PMA holds much less of both. As a result, the fund's top 10 stocks, which make up more than 56% of its holdings, vary widely. Absent from the ETF's leading names are General Electric, AT&T, Chevron and Procter & Gamble. Instead, PMA has stocks such as Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, Occidental Petroleum and Medco Health Solutions.

The new PowerShares are the first to receive regulatory approval as actively managed ETFs. But some other funds are also quite active and doing very well when compared with more passive competitors.

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