Indexing was very common, it just wasn't called indexing. It was called "active investing" but the reality is it wasn't as active or as smart as people think it

Indexing was very common, it just wasn't called indexing. It was called "active investing" but the reality is it wasn't as active or as smart as people think it was. It was very similar to today's indexing where you would funnel your money into the Facebook, Google, Amazon's of the day and collect a fat fee. This is how index funds work today, when you invest in a S&P 500 index fund it's really weighted towards the huge hitters. The dirty secret of active investing is every active investor had some kind of index-like fund going that constituted a large percentage of their portfolio. That graph is precisely my point, it's all about how we're measuring what it means to be an "index". You could engage in index-like behavior but be an "active investor". Indexing is just a label.