InsiderFlow › Glossary › What is passive investing?
Passive investing replicates an index instead of trying to beat it: minimal costs, no bets, the market's return.
A passive S&P 500 fund buys the index's 500 companies in the same proportions, and that's it. No analysts to pay, no bets to get right: which is why costs fall below 0.1% a year.
The idea, popularized by John Bogle with Vanguard in the 1970s, looked like surrender ("settling for average"); the data turned it into the winning strategy: the market's average, net of costs, beats the vast majority of professionals.
On InsiderFlow these concepts come alive on real data: what big funds and insiders are buying, explained every day.
It's the most cited theoretical debate: in practice enough active management remains to keep prices efficient.
No: it replicates the market on the way down too. The edge is in costs and discipline, not immunity.