Alex --

You raise a good point, but I'm not sure that everyone needs to switch to an index fund for advisers to need to provide more differentiated services. I sense (from both intuition and study) that there is substantial disaffection with some financial advisers among their clients, so regardless of whether index funds come to hold 98% of assets or not it feels important for advisers to focus on this.

I do tend to agree with Chuck as well though -- I expect ad dollars to come out in force to support indexation over the next few years. As distinct from active management, it's marketable as an almost scientific product which holds a lot of appeal.

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All best --

Will