In the world of investment management, the hotly debated topic of active versus passive is ubiquitous. Managers that have built careers selecting individual securities with the hope of beating passively-managed, and often lower-cost, index funds have been coming under fire as more and more data becomes available showing just how difficult this task really is….
Tag: Active Investment
ETFs Tested: COVID Free!
There has been a lot of talk over the past few years about how passive investing and the rise of exchange traded funds (ETFs) would be the next financial market bubble that would wreak havoc for investors. There hasn’t been a period of panic in financial markets similar to what occurred in 2008 to test the mettle of ETF products – that is, until the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.
Why Active and Passive Investment Are Not Mutually Exclusive
Last week, Bloomberg penned an article entitled Battered Funds Blame ETFs for Overrunning the Stock Market Again. The article (along with a subsequent Bloomberg sponsored podcast released around the same time) explores how passive investing could be blamed for the underperformance experienced by discretionary fundamental stock-picking managers. For anyone interested, the most recent SPIVA scorecard (as of…
Human Irrationality and Investment
As the battle between passive and active investing rages on and evidence continues to pile up to support the use of indexing strategies over picking stocks, investors continue to trade excessively in hopes of beating the market. Even worse, some pay exorbitant fees to managers that continually underperform. So, why do people continue to invest…