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Finally, Bill Ackman has some insightful comments about the “bubble” in indexing. Given the lousy performance of active managers over the past decade, it’s easy to see why investors continue to flock to index funds. They are cheaper in terms of fees, more tax efficient and have had better returns of late.
But here’s the problem. Indexing only works when their are a sufficient number of active managers to make the market at least semi-efficient. If everyone becomes a passive indexer, then the returns of the major indexes will start to lag in a major way as the stocks in the index become overowned and overpriced.
But there are other considerations too. Passive ownership essentially gives management a free pass and allows lousy management teams to stay entrenched.
As Ackman writes,
As index fund ownership grows as a percentage of shares outstanding, the voting power of index fund managers increases. While on the one hand, one might believe this is good for America as these “permanent” owners should think very long term compared with the many investors whose average holding period is less than one year.
On the other hand, there are significant drawbacks… While index fund managers are, of course, fiduciaries for their investors, the job of overseeing the governance of the tens of thousands of companies for which they are major shareholders is an incredibly burdensome and almost impossible job. Imagine having to read 20,000 proxy statements which arrive in February and March and having to vote them by May when you have not likely read the annual report, spent little time, if any, with the management or board members, and haven’t been schooled in the industries which comprise the index…
Of course, this is impossible. Index managers are passive and will generally toe the line for management. Ackman points out some very significant long-term effects of this, asking the proverbial question of what happens when index funds effectively control corporate America:
If the index fund trend continues, and it looks likely to do so, what happens when index funds control Corporate America? Courts have often deemed shareholders to be in control of a corporation with as little as 20% of the ownership of a company. At current rates of asset inflows, it will not be long before index funds effectively control Corporate America and the corporations of many foreign countries.
The Japanese system of cross corporate ownership, the keiretsu, has been blamed for decades of Japanese corporate underperformance and economic malaise. Large passive ownership of Corporate America by index funds risks a similar outcome without the counterbalancing force of large active investors…
The thought of corporate America turning Japanese should be enough to make even the biggest proponent of indexing pause for a moment.
Ackman says that the “greatest threat to index fund asset accumulation is deteriorating absolute returns and underperformance versus actively managed funds” because money flows into these funds with no consideration of value. I agree, and would add that this was the major rationale for the “smart beta” movement.
But perhaps the greatest takeaway here is simply to not give up on active management. When you invest outside of the mainstream, you will have returns that are outside of the mainstream. That means that there will be plenty of years when you underperform.
But if you’re a good investor, it also means that there will be years where you massive outperform. So keep your chin up. Even hedge fund masters of the universe lose money some years.