I like your summary and the data you provide in support, but I note you have left out the 'other hand.' Index funds rise and fall in tandem with the related index, e.g. S&P 500, which itself rises and falls in tandem with the 500 stocks in its 'basket,' but neither the Index Fund nor the S&P 500 Index actually own any stocks, a form of property. All the Index Fund owns are promises of other financial participants. The 500 Index owns nothing, for the data it uses is owned by the Exchanges on which the stocks are sold. This means that the Index Fund performance is subject to promises being honored fully and faithfully, and the 500 being honestly computed on the basis of information honestly collected from the Stock Market, where stocks, not promises, are actually bought and sold. As you point out, it is the pre-market decisions to buy or sell when the market is open will drive the price up and down during market hours. It these decisions made by humans and machines that determine how the market performs. Many of these decisions are made by Mutual Fund Managers whose funds actually own property, stocks, and not promises, like Index Funds. Their decisions are what count, the passive 'decisions' of the Index Fund are irrelevant. Since these Mutual Funds are so large, they own much more than half of the stocks named in the 500 fund, and the votes they cast as owners of most of the stock in the 500 determines who runs the companies whose stocks are held in their Funds. This 'invisible' group actually own, have the power, and exercise that power to benefit them, as individuals and the employees of their Fund Companies, it seems reasonable to presume. Index Funds (also known as Tracker Funds) are the Tail of the Mutual Fund Managers' Dog. Active Managers try to anticipate and place their bets on individual company stock moving up or down in price. Index Fund Managers are not interested in company stocks, and, in any event, provide no advice only a service. How many shares of Apple did the Index Funds buy when first offered? None. When did they ever buy Apple? None. They have never owned Apple. How many bought Apple on the advice of Active Managers? Everyone. Neither the Mutual Fund, nor the Index Managers advise purchase the any stock in particular, just BUY BUY BUY Risking all of your wealth on whims of people who don't care about you at all, i.e. the people who compute the 500 Index, and the people who run the Index Fund, and play no part in the direction of stock prices, instead of a living, breathing, person you know and who knows you and depends on satisfying you so he can eat seems reackless at the very least. The fact that you fail to point this out, I presume is unintended, and not the result of being unduly influenced by Index Fund "Managers" (who in fact manage nothing).