My fund is better than your fund

The closest we get to a really big argument in the world of investment is when passive is pitted against active management.

Not quite high level religious sectarianism, but we have managed to make a debate out of it, as only our industry can do. I am sure it originates from some kind of snobbery or hierarchy in financial services. We crack jokes about actuaries being boring, but probably most of us are not smart enough to know what actuaries do. Equity managers think they are more interesting than bond managers, but that was before we had CDOs and ABS and all those lovely acronyms. The active versus passive debate has always seemed as pointless as working out if one part of the industry is cleverer than an...