FYI: Index investing compared to active investing used to be easy to explain to anyone.
Back in the day of its infancy and adolescence—late 1970s, ’80s, ’90s—index investing could be easily defined as an investment offering exposure to an established index like the S&P 500 or any other broad-based equity index, Dow Jones, Russell 2000, etc.
As indexing was growing up, the lore of Wall Street’s genius stock picks were top of the tongue: “If you had the right broker, you could do well,” the myth went. If you argued that the same could be said for an index fund, there would be no golf invitations for you.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/blog/indexing-sheds-passive-clothing?nopaging=1
