This is why I don't invest in actively managed funds. I like the argument that if anyone could pick stocks better than average, they'd end owning everything -

This is why I don't invest in actively managed funds. I like the argument that if anyone could pick stocks better than average, they'd end owning everything - but I don't pretend to understand the share market well enough to be confident investing everything according to that. But if the very people who know most about the share market charge fixed fees, this seems to me to be an implicit recognition that they can't out-perform the market in any meaningful way. I once engaged a broker in an argument about this, and they ended up admitting that the only value they added was managing the whole shares-bonds-cash mix for people who couldn't or didn't want to do it for themselves. And back to the point of the article, automating that management would not be difficult. I agree that there are hard times ahead for most brokers.