Active Management Under Siege

As data continues to accumulate that reinforces the growing consensus of the superiority of passive indexing strategies over active management, the defenders of the old guard are fighting back. They are cutting fees, shuttering underperforming strategies, and merging businesses in order to reduce costs. The pressure is severe: according to Morningstar Inc., some $1.2 trillion has been withdrawn from actively managed U.S. stock funds since the start of 2007, while nearly the same amount has moved into passive U.S. stock funds over the same period. Active managers have argued that performance needs to be measured over a long time frame in order to observe the value added by stock pickers.