Meet with PWL Capital: https://pages.pwlcapital.com/en-ca/contact-us?utm_source=content&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=rationalreminder_yt Avoid Online Scams: https://pwlcapital.com/stay-safe-online/ In this episode, we’re joined by Martijn Cremers, Dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame and co-author of the groundbreaking 2009 paper that introduced the concept of Active Share. Martijn brings fresh nuance to the long-standing debate over active versus passive management, challenging decades of conventional wisdom built on the foundational 1997 Carhart paper. With his comprehensive research, Martijn argues that dismissing active management may be overly simplistic—especially in less efficient markets like bonds, small-cap equities, or emerging markets. Together, we explore how empirical support for passive superiority has softened in recent decades, the overlooked structural flaws in performance benchmarks, and how closet indexing quietly undermines the active management space. Martijn outlines the three pillars of active success—skill, conviction, and opportunity—and makes a compelling case for patient, high active share strategies that persist over time. Timestamps: 0:00:00 Intro 0:06:15 The conventional wisdom on active management 0:11:42 Whether conventional wisdom judges active management fairly 0:15:36 How the shift of investment dollars toward index funds affected the active management industry 0:19:55 How this affects the interpretation of past research on active management 0:23:30 What made Active Share a valuable contribution to the academic finance literature 0:27:42 The Active Share cutoff for a fund to be considered a closet index fund 0:32:48 Martijn describes the concept of a fund’s Active Fee 0:37:36 How closet index funds perform relative to their more active peers 0:41:42 Empirically, how Active Share relate to the “three pillars of active management” 0:48:05 How the Active Share concept was initially received by academia and the industry 0:53:30 How concerned investors seeking high active share funds should be with performance dispersion 0:57:59 How the arguments in favor of indexing in equities hold up in fixed income 1:00:59 How active bond funds perform relative to index funds at long horizons 1:03:44 How bond liquidity affects bond index fund active share 1:08:05 Why active bond funds have remained relatively popular despite active management declining in equities 1:09:53 Martijn defines success in his life Links From Today’s Episode: Rational Reminder on iTunes — https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rational-reminder-podcast/id1426530582. Rational Reminder Website — https://rationalreminder.ca/ Rational Reminder on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/rationalreminder/ Rational Reminder on X — https://x.com/RationalRemind Rational Reminder on TikTok — www.tiktok.com/@rationalreminder Rational Reminder on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/ Rational Reminder Email — info@rationalreminder.ca Benjamin Felix — https://pwlcapital.com/our-team/ Benjamin on X — https://x.com/benjaminwfelix Benjamin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminwfelix/ Dan Bortolotti — https://pwlcapital.com/our-team/ Dan Bortolotti on LinkedIn — https://ca.linkedin.com/in/dan-bortolotti-8a482310 Cameron Passmore — https://pwlcapital.com/our-team/ Cameron on X — https://x.com/CameronPassmore Cameron on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronpassmore/ Episode 316: Andrew Chen - https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/316 Episode 212: Ralph S.J. Koijen - https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/212 Episode 220: Jonathan Berk & Jules Van Binsbergen - https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/220 Episode 346: Hendrick Bessembinder - https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/346 Papers From Today’s Episode: https://zbib.org/2224f8de634743fb8f33a68009b8fcff