Good article in the WSJ today, 3/1/10, on pension funds that are moving more money into passive investing and away from actively managed portfolios. Royal Dutch Shell with $14.3 billion pension fund has become the latest. Sighting that the active management, where managers pick stocks and bonds, have not been very successful vs. the indexes.
Last week, Swiss-franc PK Post fund, one of the largest in Switzerland, did the same. They noted that the change is being driven by the fact that overall asset allocation is more important to investment return than stock and bond picking managers. This means lower management costs and higher returns for the investors using broad based ETFs and index funds.