Mark Gilbert , Columnist

$1 Trillion Can't Answer This Question

Active or passive? Norway has a lesson for all investors.
Photographer: Carina Johansen/Bloomberg
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The good news for Norway's citizens is that the nation's sovereign wealth fund has made a ton of money from actively managing its $1 trillion on their behalf. The bad news for the rest of us is that we'd still probably be better off sticking with a low-cost passive exchange-traded fund.

"Clearly, it is the equity portfolio rather than the fixed income portfolio that contributes to the Fund’s active return," professors Bernt Arne Odegaard at the University of Stavanger and Magnus Dahlquist at the Stockholm School of Economics said in a government-commissioned report published this week.