Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I think I probably said that and while I don’t have time right now for a full response the fact is passive strategies require active decisions. Look at your own holdings where you're deciding how much and when to invest in the US, EM, Europe etc. Those are all active decisions. A truly passive strategy would buy the global equity market and a global bond market.
I understand your point about mutual funds as well, but here again its an oversimplification. There are things mutual funds can do that an average retail investor simply cannot; between tax and currency strategies the higher fee can be quite justified. That doesn't mean that you should invest every dollar in a fund, but you could be making a good choice depending on the specific situation and requirements.
Lastly, you're a charterholder, so you know that with good analysis and review you can find mispriced securities. Big funds and managers can't always invest there because the businesses are too small for them to take meaningful positions and things like that, but an average retail guy can. Also buying securities is cheap than any ETF. You have the transaction fees which are a wash and no MER at all. So to suggest its all or nothing is simply an oversimplified view in my opinion.
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Agree with everything you're saying and in particular your first point in regards to the global market. In a sense any deviation from the global passive portfolio is in fact active. Lots of research and ideas coming out about this lately given the ease of which we can access said global market.
It's such a complex topic with many nuances, and I again agree with what you're saying. However I think over-simplification for the average retail investor which is the majority of people on a Calgary Flames forum, keeping it simple and managing fees and emotions is the way to go. People are looking for a place to start. You can't go wrong with setting your own asset allocation and using a disciplined, diversified, low cost, passive approach. You can go very wrong with other approaches.
I should note that I'm in the institutional space and don't deal with retail.