Sat, Nov 7, 2026
A A A
Welcome Guest
Free Trial RSS pod
Get FREE trial access to our award winning publications
Alternative Market Briefing

Passive investing means surrendering to fear

Thursday, November 09, 2017

Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia:

Participants at the latest Opalesque 2017 Netherlands Roundtable offered some critical reflections on the surge of passive investing. Pieter de Vries Robbe, Director of Operations and Business Development at Capstone Investment Advisors thinks that that being passive is basically surrendering to fear.

"If you're not willing to take personal risk, if you don't have courage to stand up for what you believe in, you end up investing passively," Robbe told the Roundtable and added, "And unfortunately, courage nowadays is a scarce good. As a result, we see a very pale landscape with a dominant herd mentality. This has eroded the investment spirit that the Dutch institutional market once had."

He admitted that the investment industry was partly to blame for what happened in the financial crisis - but at the same time, the sector is also in the process of killing an industry that was successful in the Netherlands for hundreds of years.

Robbe added, "Daily, I hope to find signals of the pendulum swinging back. Unfortunately, I haven't seen clear positive signs."

Passive should never be seen as being responsible

Harold de Boer, Managing Director, Member of Management Committee and Member of Board of Directors at Transtrend, finds......................

To view our full article Click here

Previous Opalesque Exclusives                                  
Previous Other Voices                                               
Access Alternative Market Briefing

 



  • Top Forwarded
  • Top Tracked
  • Top Searched
  1. Opalesque Exclusive: DACH institutions push alternatives to 32.3% of portfolios as hedge funds make a comeback[more]

    Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers: Institutional investors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland now hold almost a third of their portfolios in alternative investments, and they are more confident than ever in

  2. KRX chief courts CalPERS for bigger bet on Korea[more]

    Korea Exchange Chairman and CEO Jeong Eun-bo held talks with California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, to promote greater investment in South Korea's capital markets, the bourse operator announced Wednesday. Jeong met with CalPERS Chief Investment Officer Stephen Gilmore.

  3. 755 Unicorns, $8 Trillion: Fifth Era maps the autonomous digital economy[more]

    Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers: Fifth Era Partners, a specialized asset manager focused on the convergence of Internet, AI/Agentic and Blockchain technologies, has released the findings of its 13th Bia

  4. Opalesque Exclusive: "Enough beta plays" - how Fasanara builds an alpha-only multi-strategy platform[more]

    Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers: Most multi-strategy funds promise diversification. Fewer can explain why their return streams should stay independent when markets turn. In an Opalesque SkillsLab investor

  5. Opalesque Exclusive: Governance, Scale, and Boutique Resilience in a Consolidating Hedge Fund Industry[more]

    Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers: The hedge fund industry has undergone significant consolidation in recent years, with capital increasingly concentrated among large multi-strategy platforms. Yet boutique m