Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Active Money Management Isn’t Dead Yet

There are five niches that should survive.

Passive won’t work in some situations.

Source: Bettmann/Getty Images
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There’s a line of argument in the financial press that suggests that active money management is dying, a victim of high fees and underperformance versus low-cost indexing that captures average market returns.

Newsflash: This is anything but the case. Active investing still dominates asset management around the world, and less than “18 percent of the global stock market is owned by index-tracking investors,” according to a 2017 BlackRock Inc. analysis. That is a modest share and a clear sign that active asset management still dominates the industry.