Active Management FAQs

Active management is an approach to investing. A brief description of active management is available on the Active Managers Council website.

Active management provides investors the opportunity to earn superior returns.

Equally importantly, active management enables investors to customize portfolios. For example, active management can help investors manage risk, focus on income, or implement a tax plan.

Finally, there are many areas where active management is essential. For example, an active approach is essential for ESG investing.

While active management has the potential to earn higher returns, there is a risk that those returns will underperform the relevant benchmark.

In addition, active management generally costs more than passive management, as active managers must pay for the resources needed to identify investments.

However, recent research suggests that active management provides a reasonable combination of return and cost.

Investors need both active and passive management. Pitting active against passive creates a false dichotomy that does investors a disservice.

Active management allows investors to pursue higher returns and customize portfolios, while passive management helps reduce costs.

Active and passive management are often combined in the management of a portfolio.

Every form of investing involves risk of loss. Both active and passive investments are affected by the ups and downs of the markets. Buying index funds does not guarantee that investors will meet their financial goals.

At the same time, some of the common methodologies used to create indexes may increase exposure to higher-risk securities, such as stocks that have performed well recently, bonds of companies with large amounts of debt outstanding, or more expensively-valued securities.

All investing involves active decision making. For example, buying an index fund is an active choice, and even constructing an index involves active decisions.

Active management is used in all aspects of investing. In addition, index construction is itself an active process.

Through active investing, investors can customize portfolios to achieve their financial goals. For example, active management can help investors manage risk, focus on income, or implement a tax plan.

There is an extensive body of research finding that traditional approaches to selecting active managers — which consider past performance, investment approach and manager characteristics — can identify outperforming managers in advance.

And researching any investment opportunity requires effort – whether active or passive.

On the contrary, many active managers outperform. However, not all active managers outperform, and even the best active managers can underperform over some periods.

Importantly, investors need a long-term time horizon to measure the success of active management.

In general, the current media and regulatory narratives are overly negative about active management and focus too much on short-term outcomes.

The active-passive “scorecards” have a flawed methodology that generates an overly negative assessment of active managers’ skill. While the scorecards provide some insights for shorter time periods, they are far from definitive, especially over long periods.

Not at all. Even the funds that have produced outstanding 20-year results have had periods of short-term underperformance.

At the same time, focusing on short-term results only encourages performance chasing, a strategy that is widely acknowledged to be harmful to investors’ financial health.

Sustainable investing inherently involves active decision making.

Active management takes a dynamic approach to the assessment of the materiality of ESG factors and how they affect specific companies, industries, or sectors.

Active managers also engage with corporate managements on how to address sustainability and consider how sustainability factors intersect with investor goals.

Focusing on passively managed funds doesn’t reduce the need for plan fiduciaries to make a thorough analysis of potential investments. Passively managed doesn’t equate to “not risky” or “uncomplicated.”

Nor should litigation risk or administrative convenience drive the fiduciaries’ decision-making process. Fiduciaries should only consider the best interests of plan participants.

Active management is essential for market efficiency. Active managers perform the investment research and analysis that make markets efficient, by ensuring that prices remain in line with underlying fundamentals.

In addition, they play an important role in corporate governance, by encouraging strong stewardship at the companies they invest in.

Finally, they support capital formation and entrepreneurship by providing a market for IPOs and other forms of capital raising.

All investors benefit from the efforts of active managers.

One key benefit is that efficient markets make it easier to diversify risk. In inefficient markets, the value of all investments move in the same direction at the same time, which means that it’s harder to reduce risk by owning multiple investments.

Efficient markets also encourage investment by both individuals and companies.

The Active Managers Council advocates for a more balanced narrative on active and passive management. It provides education about the benefits of active management and its vital importance to the securities markets.

The Council helps investors through research and educational events and by engaging with policymakers.

The Active Managers Council is an initiative of the Investment Advisers Association.

Some researchers have noted increases in price correlations and in market volatility along with a decline in liquidity and changes in trading patterns. However, other researchers have argued that growth in passive management has had offsetting risk-reducing effects.

This is an evolving area of research, and markets are affected by many factors, not just the balance between active and passive management. However, the principle is clear: active management is an essential driver of market efficiency.