Investment style: Active and passive are tools at advisers' disposal

For the last ten years active fund managers in the UK have been under the pump. In that time the amount of money held in passive index trackers has doubled, from 9% of UK industry assets to 21%, according to Investment Association data. Last year retail investors withdrew £25.7bn from all investment funds, the worst figure on record by a country mile. But even then, tracker funds saw £11bn of money coming in from retail investors, which implies that active funds suffered a staggering £36bn of outflows. To put that in some context, during 2008, which witnessed the mayhem of the Lehman'...