Passive investing

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Michael James on Money  Jun 21  Comment 
I had the pleasure of listening to Larry Swedroe speak last night about the benefits of passive investing. Swedroe is the Director of Research for the Buckingham Family of Financial Services, is the author of several solid books on investing, and...
The Globe and Mail  Apr 29  Comment 
‘Forget picking stocks,’ advises this pension fund investment officer
The Globe and Mail  Apr 22  Comment 
When deciding whether to try to beat the market, look to academia
Canadian Business Blog  Dec 22  Comment 
Here is Part XI of the Quotable Guide to Passive Investing. Part I is here. To scroll through Parts II to X, click on links at the bottom of each page. The Successful Investor Today Larry E. Swedroe The interests of Wall Street and the...
Canadian Business Blog  Nov 13  Comment 
Taylor Larimore offers a guide on the Investment Gems webpage to the literature on passive index investing. Here is Part III of the Quotable Guide to Passive Investing, a condensation of his work. Part I can be found here and Part II...
Investing School  Jun 22  Comment 
I apologize for the lack of inspiring posts lately but I have a good reason for this behavior - I haven't been thinking about investing much because I moved a chunk of my net worth into passive funds.  Instead of being very in-tuned with the...




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Passive investing

A financial strategy in which a fund manager makes as few portfolio decisions as possible, in order to minimize transaction costs, including the incidence of capital gains tax. One popular method is to mimic the performance of an externally specified index.

Passive investing is most common on the equity market, where index funds track a stock market index. You must also understand that the S&P 500 does not employ a passive investment strategy. Its is an actively managed low turnover portfolio selected by a committee using investment criteria. [1]

From an investors view, securities can go bad real quick. Passive management by its very nature, is slow to remove junk out of the portfolio. Passively investing is not the same as minimizing risk, unless the risk you want to minimize is the risk of not matching the index. Investors are concerned with absolute, not relative risk and return. Minimizing risk is about diversification. [2]

Although Malkiel still recommends indexing, or so-called passive investing, there are valid criticisms of too narrow a definition of indexing. The best general index to emulate is one with a broad base. [3]

Actively managed funds have more choice in terms of assets and may decide against investing in some countries that are experiencing a downturn, or political or economic instability. When following the index, a passive fund does not have this option. [4]

If you believe the market is efficient, and it is impossible to outperform the market, then passive investing, or indexing is probably the way to go. Historically passive funds have out performed the majority of active funds [5] Part of the index fund advantage has resulted from being 100 percent invested in stocks at all times in a bull market. [6]

14c opposed to active, from passivus, capable of feeling or suffering, to suffer. Meaning "not active" is first recorded late 15c. [7]

References

  1. Dean LeBaron's Treasury of Investment Wisdom: 30 Great Investing Minds by Dean LeBaron and Romesh Vaitilingam ISBN-10: 0471152943 pg51
  2. Dean LeBaron's Treasury of Investment Wisdom: 30 Great Investing Minds by Dean LeBaron and Romesh Vaitilingam ISBN-10: 0471152943 pg118
  3. A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing by Burton Gordon Malkiel ISBN-10: 0393062457 pg363
  4. Mutual Funds: An Introduction to the Core Concepts by Dr. Mark Mobius ISBN-10: 0470821434 pg 27
  5. Dean LeBaron's Treasury of Investment Wisdom: 30 Great Investing Minds by Dean LeBaron and Romesh Vaitilingam ISBN-10: 0471152943 pg47
  6. Dean LeBaron's Treasury of Investment Wisdom: 30 Great Investing Minds by Dean LeBaron and Romesh Vaitilingam ISBN-10: 0471152943 pg117
  7. [1]
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