In 1975, John Bogle launched the first ever passive fund, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and heralded an era of passive investing. Bogle was influenced by Eugene Fama’s view that the capital market was informationally efficient and that sustained success in stock picking was impossible. Since then, trading has increased; more and better investment research is being undertaken; high-speed communication networks have taken away the advantages to a privileged few; and most importantly, institutional investors dominate the markets. In this environment, it is not easy to pick stocks or enter and exit the market successfully and consistently. The torchbearer for passive investing today is the exchange-traded fund (ETF).
In the US, during FY 2003-16, total net assets of equity index funds increased by 3.5 times (from $0.39 trillion to $1.77 trillion), while that of active equity funds increased by just 0.7 times (from $2.73 trillion to $4.65 trillion). More importantly, during this period, a net amount of $1.29 trillion moved out of active equity funds while $0.46 trillion moved into index equity funds. Why is passive investing gaining over active investing? It’s because active investing has not been able to deliver returns (net of costs) that are more than from passive investing. Passive funds posted an expense ratio of 0.09% in 2016 while active equity funds were seven times more expensive with an expense ratio of 0.63%.
