The question of whether investors should be passive or active is two-folded. Both participants are required to keep the markets at an equilibrium level of efficiency, and one cannot exist without the other. Besides, this question is extreme since different degrees of passive and active asset management exists. Academic researchers and asset managers disagree whether it is the passive or active asset management strategy that performs better than the other and is always subject to different personal preferences, data samples, and time-frames.
Some researchers (Arnott et al., 2003; Fortin & Michelson, 2002; Miller, 2007) have suggested that passive asset management provides more value given the higher fees and expense ratios of active asset management. Commonly, the investors pay fees to asset managers who manage the fund through load fees in the time of purchase or sell and operation expense ratios tied to the assets under management. Since active asset managers do trade securities more often than the passive counterparts, they tend to incur more expenses. Therefore, the active investors must weigh the expected return over the risks and cost of every trade. The general consensus in the academic literature is that lower fees are preferable to higher fees since higher fees destroy the expected returns (Gruber, 1996). Carhart (1997) suggests that expense ratios, portfolio turnover, and load fees affect the portfolio performance significantly and negatively. These results are consistent with Samuelson (1965), Sharpe (1966), and Malkiel (1995).
The Morningstar 2019 study of passive and active fund fees, presented below in Figure 3, demonstrates the difference in fees that investors pay for the asset managers regarding both styles and the overall decrease in fees after the year 2000. An investor using the actively managed funds did pay fees nearly four and a half times more than a passive fund investor during 2018. This study also suggests similar results to Carhart’s (1997) study. The low-cost funds are more likely to outperform the more expensive counterparts. The study by Morningstar has three important outcomes regarding asset management fees. Firstly, the investors are paying more awareness for the importance
of asset management fees which has led investors to favor funds with lower costs.
Secondly, the asset managers have realized the cost awareness of investors, and they have reacted to competition by cutting fees to vie for market share from the others in the asset management industry. Thirdly, the move towards lower cost and fee-based financial advice has aroused demand for lower-cost funds like exchange-traded funds.
(Morningstar, 2019).
Figure 3. Asset-weighted average fees for funds as the end of 2018. (Morningstar, 2019).
Since the active asset managers charge and incur more costs, it is only rational that the call for better performance is raised and expected to justify the higher fees. Carhart’s (1997) study offers slight evidence for skilled or informed asset managers who can beat the market. Carhart suggests that the performance after fees can be related to the one-year momentum effect by Jegadeesh and Titman (1993). Gruber (1996) presents that the cost factors can explain only some portion of the active asset managers’
underperformance.
As a result, Chevalier and Ellison (1999) questions whether some asset managers perform better because of personal characteristics and that some asset managers are therefore more skilled than others. They focus on the asset managers’ characteristics
rather than on the characteristics of the managed funds. They suggest that asset managers who have accomplished better selective undergraduate studies have better performance than asset managers with less selective undergraduate studies. In addition, they present that older asset managers perform worse than younger asset managers. To conclude, the findings suggest that some asset managers can perform better than other asset managers. This is paradoxical to the perfectly efficient market hypothesis, and the authors suggest that the difference in performance is only essential to keep equilibrium at the informationally efficient markets. (Chevalier et al., 1999).
Since few active asset managers can beat the market, studies like (Johnson and Collins, 2000) continue to call for active asset management. Their study suggests that only active asset managers can manage risk contrarily to passive asset managers. They highlight the active asset managers’ ability to shift assets to alternative investments and lock in profits when they arise. Similarly to the studies (Henriksson & Merton, 1981; Henriksson, 1984;
Andreu et al., 2018), who provide evidence of asset managers’ market timing ability.
Some studies like Grinblatt and Titman (1992) evidence the asset managers’ ability to collect information efficiently and pick the right stocks to achieve better performance consistently over time.
The S&P Dow Jones Indices report (2019) studies actively managed U.S. equity funds against their benchmark indices on a risk-adjusted basis over different time periods. To account for fees, they study the performance by including the fees as well as excluding the fees. They also adjust the benchmark returns by their volatility. After adjusting for the risk factors, the actively managed U.S. equity funds do underperform their passive benchmarks indices in all time frames and including the fees. Figure 4 below presents the net-of-fee underperformance percent by active funds compared to the benchmark indices. The study shows that even after controlling the fees, most active funds do underperform their benchmarks. This study is in line with Sharpe (1991), who highlights that, as a group, the asset managers cannot beat the market, and only very few managers can do it. (S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, 2019).
Figure 4. Actively managed U.S. equity funds outperformed by benchmarks. (S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, 2019).
Passive asset management is one of the most successful innovations of modern finance (Blitz, 2014). Investors are increasingly shifting from actively managed products to passive investment vehicles since no consistent overperformance for active management can be identified, and a surefire way to increase profits is to lower costs.
This shift is establishes on the discussion between the level of efficient markets (Fama, 1979) and modern portfolio theory (Markowitz, 1952) as well as their implications. The shift is also highly motivated by the studies on costs and performance differences. The start of passive asset management can be attached to the invention of the first index fund by Bogle (1975). However, passive asset management has always existed in the form of a buy-and-hold strategy. After the financial crisis of 2008, the investors’ demand for transparent and lower-cost investment vehicles grew explosively. Therefore, exchange-traded funds have received much attention and represent one of the most successful financial innovations during the last decades (Lettau and Madhavan, 2018).