Warren Buffett devoted more than four pages of annual shareholder letter to criticize active managers on Wall Street. He stated that they charge exorbitant fees for returns that fail to live up to lofty assumptions. An article on CNBC provided further details:
"When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients," stated the widely-read letter released on Saturday morning. "Both large and small investors should stick with low-cost index funds."Investors seem to be heeding Buffett's anti-active advice, as more than $20 billion flowed out of U.S. active equity funds in January despite a rising stock market, according to Morningstar.
What do you guys think of this? Is Buffet right and is active investment on the decline?
Comments (26)
Index funds are awesome during a bull market! I bet people weren't so fond of them in late 2008. Some active managers are probably terrible though, but that doesn't mean that the concept per se is awful.
While I agree, the article goes in detail about a bet that Buffet made that started in 2008. Here is what his bet entitled:
The compounded annual increase of the index fund was 7.1% while the average for the five hedge funds selected was 2.2%. Looking more specifically at the returns actually makes it seem more enticing to go into index funds during / following a recession rather than attempting to mitigate risk.
It's easy for him to say when the past decade has been an incredible bull run. Let's see if his bet holds true 3 years from now.
There was also a good deal of volatility during that timeframe which could have allowed hedge funds to capitalize. What is most amazing is that the 5 hedge funds chosen to compete against his chosen index fund averaged only 2.2%. Even in good years some of those funds were down or underperformed pretty badly.
Yeah it held true... Nice try though...
Money can purchase freedom, if you have the guts to buy it
this is another reason why I hate when Buffett opines. he built his entire net worth on a hybrid between active management and buying companies. his only saving grace is instead of charging 2 & 20%, he charges 25% of profits over 6% with no management fee. I don't have anything inherently wrong with this model, but it's kinda hard to run an Asset Management shop without ongoing revenue.
Buffett acts like his shit doesn't stick which pisses off a lot of people
Buffett acts like his shit doesn't stick which pisses off a lot of people
Why do you think he consistently seems to go after active management?
because he's old and bored. 30 years ago he wrote a paper on how value investing is superior (google superinvestors of graham and doddsville). he has 2 guys running most of the money nowadays so he splits time between buying cherry coke and opining about politics, taxes, active/passive, and income inequality. I miss the old Buffett
Could someone give the counter argument that index funds outperform actively managed funds over the long run and are therefore the better investment? I understand that actively managed funds usually suffer smaller losses during bear markets, but that does not seem like a sound argument to me.
the issue is lumping in all active in one bucket and all index in another bucket. there are certain strategies like low PE, high ROIC, high active share, some quant strategies (ran by the big shops like rentech, DE Shaw, 2 sigma, Citadel) and so on that (over long periods of time) can reliably outperform indices. on the whole, active will NEVER outperform passive, because all of passive + all of active is the market, and if the market is the median return, half of active managers underperform, and those that only barely outperform will turn into underperformers net of fees, so any given year, you have the majority of active managers underperforming net of fees.
and that's not true that active managers suffer smaller losses during bear markets, that only holds water if that active manager has been holding a lot of cash and is carrying less beta than the index. my point is that when the next bear growls, people will go back to active management partially because of this perception.
if you're young, in the accumulation phase, and don't get spooked by market declines, I'd put most of your money in something that doesn't require a lot of attention. if that's SPY, an active fund, a factor based ETF, whatever it is, just put it on autopilot. most investor success isn't based on whether you outperform or underperform the index by 50bps or even a point or two, it's regularly contributing a high % of your income to global stocks for decades.
if you can't stand the thought of potentially paying someone high fees if they underperform, then just buy an index fund (and I'd recommend something like VTWSX that gets the global market, not just US). if you believe there are certain strategies that can outperform over time, pick those funds and stick with them for a long time. or if you're unsure, split the difference. if you want to do it yourself, have the bulk of your money in something that doesn't require attention and then pick a few names you like and see what happens. most outperformance and underperformance comes from investor behavior, not from security selection, at least in my experience.
you're in wealth management so genuinely interested in getting your take on this. Have you seen any of your clients accumulate $5 million + in wealth from following the prescription of contributing 10-15% of their income (from their day job) to index funds for decades and letting it compound (aka the popular formula espoused by a million personal finance books and gurus). Reason I ask is because from my casual observation I've never met anyone who accumulated significant wealth this way unless they were a high earning professional or put it another way it's not that difficult to accumulate 5MM if you save 20% of your $300k income a year. Most of the wealthy people I know got their wealth from either owning a business or hit a home run through some non public investment like real estate or again some sort ownership stake in a company or companies or again successfully climbing very far up the corporate ladder. But I've yet to meet the guy with a large net worth who just steadily socked away his $75k income into an ira or 401k.
But who has access to places like RenTeh, DE Shaw, Two Sigma, and Citadel? Buffett says that in the aggregate indexers will outperform active managers, and I find it hard to disagree with that statement.
I'll give you one. Does every active manager that strives for absolute returns has the same risk profile as an index fund?
Have you read The Snowball? A lot of what Buffet did to accumulate the first stages of his fortune is illegal today-- though in all fairness it wasn't illegal then, but it still explains his initial edge and why it can't be done again today.
As for the passive vs. active argument I think any basic investor can tell you passive has been the hot trend the past few years. Active can occasionally make sense for some investors in certain situations however.
The quickest example that comes to mind is an investor age 60 who is planning on retiring soon and can't afford 100% downside capture during a market pullback and isn't nearly as concerned with 100% upside capture--in that case it makes sense to use an active manager who is using a variety of capital appreciation and total return strategies to minimize downside capture should the markets turn bearish. They aren't entirely concerned with performance and because of this an active manager can fill that void much more efficiently than say, a CD ladder.
This is such active management speak.
No, you don't need to pay exorbitant fees to an active manager to hedge your risk. You can do this by diversifying between stock/bonds/CDs based on your risk profile. Takes literally
FWU , I totally agree and could write an essay about how a person willfully maintaining a lack of financial literacy is literally more costly than a college degree via the fees they pay us advisors. I've lost more than a couple clients because I've explained how to use Morningstar, ETF's vs. mutual funds, active vs. passive, market cycles etc so don't think I'm rationalizing anything. For the record, it's fine with me, I'd rather serve as a Keynesian multiplier than a drain on their money when possible. I'll be the first to admit that the pricing strategy within advising is becoming antiquated. But before you go all Boglehead, also realize not everyone has the desire to take even a mere hour to educate themselves.
Unfortunately some people just don't care to learn it and their eyes glaze over when they hear anything financial. Now for me to build a portfolio and rebalance (I also use ETF models, not mutual funds), tax loss harvest, adjust allocations, smooth out their insurance, allocate their 401k (which I don't get paid on), come up with a personalized budget, make sure their wills and trust documents are intact, and get them specialized lending solutions they can't get at a retail bank-- well I think we can both agree that some compensation is deserved in those cases.
"Do as I say, not as I do."
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