Why passive investing could become the scourge of Wall Street

New York

THE problem with passive investing, I promise, is worse than you think.

There has been plenty of anxiety on Wall Street about the rise of indexing and ETFs, known collectively as passive investing, with the number of indexes exceeding the number of stocks. Academics and financial pundits have posited that index investing may be pushing up consumer prices, though there are also critics who are sceptical that it kills competition.