I can rephrase. A typical scenario for say a pension (aka superannuation, aka 401k) is that when you are young you go for higher short term risk and higher pot

I can rephrase. A typical scenario for say a pension (aka superannuation, aka 401k) is that when you are young you go for higher short term risk and higher potential growth mix of investments and as you get closer to retirement you derisk. The idea is that a crash when young is no issue as the market will recover and probably you’ll get some bargain stock soon after. When you are older you don’t want to lose 20% of your savings to a crash so more money gets diverted into lower risk stuff. The point is that there is not one investment strategy that suits all. Therefore there is a place for fund managers to provide different risk profiles. They aren’t really getting alpha but they are useful nonetheless. They won’t be picking stocks based on trading ideas. To compound this, these large funds deal with billions of dollars. If you place a market order for a billion dollars people notice. Just like if you had to spend a million dollars on ebay on used apple watches you are going to affect the price of those watches because of your bids. Therefore they will find it hard to seek alpha anyway. The point is there is a place for funds that might seem like “dumb money” but just broadly follow indices and there is a place for traders with a model and a theory to try and beat the markets.