Tag Archives: Charles Ellis
Worse Than Marxism?
The investment community was bombarded last week with a paper arguing that passive investing is “worse than Marxism.” That any putatively-serious observer can compare an investment strategy, even one he doesn’t like, with a political ideology responsible for the deaths of millions boggles the imagination, but maybe I’m just too sensitive. The paper’s argument seems…
Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts
As surely as we saw the ball drop in Times Square, at the turn of the year we see predictions that this year, unlike last, will be the year when active equity management shows its true value. Of course, similar predictions were made a year ago, and they didn’t work out particularly well, but that never seems to…
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Playing the Loser’s Game
Forty years ago, Charles Ellis characterized active investment management as a “loser’s game.” From the perspective of the mid-1970s, Ellis argued that since institutional investors had come to dominate the U.S. equity market, they could no longer generate market-beating returns by taking advantage of less well-informed amateurs. Investment management had become a game played by professionals against other…