Quote:
Originally Posted by XutvJet
... I fired him and moved all my money to Vanguard. The value of my account skyrocketed between 2013 and now.
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The advent of low-fee vehicles like those pioneered by Vanguard, combined with the free money we've enjoyed for the last 20 years made it virtually impossible for passive investors not to meet/beat the S&P 500 during that time. However, we have entered a new era and it's going to be very difficult to make sizable returns by index investing for a while. How long? Who knows for sure, but it's looking like a minimum of 5 years to me, and could easily be a decade.
In this environment, stock-pickers are going to become more important, and a strong investment team that can find returns w/o taking too much risk is something that everyone should consider. Actively-managed ETFs are one way to take advantage of their expertise. Another is Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), who are fiduciaries, which means that they have a legal obligation to act in your best interests, not their company's. Everyone has access to RIAs through their brokerage house now. Schwab, for example, has an entire network of them and if you're a Schwab customer their services are available to you.
Will using an active manager cost you a bit? Yeah, it will, typically 1-1.5%. Will it pay off over passive investing? In this evironment I think it will.