Darius McDermott: Is this the peak for passives?

2016 particularly painful for stockpickers

With investors standing on the threshold of a new era of 'quantitative tightening', Darius McDermott argues talented active managers who have courage in their convictions should continue to deliver.

A rising tide has certainly lifted all boats since central banks across the world introduced extraordinary monetary policy measures in the wake of the financial crisis. These included quantitative easing (QE), which saw central banks in the UK, US, Japan and Europe inject trillions of pounds, dollars, yen and euros into government bonds. This wall of money inflated asset prices and increased correlations between markets and stocks between 2009 and 2016. QE, in other words, has powered the eight-year bull market that is still going strong today. Against this backdrop, a swathe of passi...