The End of Indexing

Index-tracking is the flavour of the day – it accounts for around one-third of the total US mutual fund market, and is still growing rapidly. Indexing appears to be unstoppable.

But, in The End of Indexing, investment veteran Niels Jensen presents a different vision. In a forthright and compelling examination of the investment landscape, Jensen argues that the economic environment we are entering will be unsuited to index-tracking strategies.

Jensen identifies six structural mega-trends that are set to disrupt investors around the globe:
1. End of the debt super-cycle
2. Retirement of the baby boomers
3. Declining spending power of the middle classes
4. Rise of the East
5. Death of fossil fuels
6. Mean reversion of wealth-to-GDP

In conjunction, these six themes have the potential to create conditions resembling a perfect storm that will result in low economic growth for decades to come. Investment techniques and methodologies – including passive investing strategies – that have worked so well in the bull market of the last 35 years will no longer deliver acceptable results.

As a new investment approach is called for, The End of Indexing provides investors with a guide to the challenging environment ahead and a warning about the future decline of index-tracking.

Author Biography

Niels Clemen Jensen has over 30 years of investment banking and investment management experience. He began his career in Copenhagen in 1984 before moving to Sherson Lehman in London in 1986. In 1989 he joined Goldman Sachs and became co-head of its U.S. equity business in Europe in 1992, a post he held until 1996, when he joined Oppenheimer to manage its European business. In 1999 he re-joined Lehman Brothers, now in charge of European Wealth Management. In 2006 he was appointed Director of Trafalgar House Trustees Limited, advising one of the UK’s leading corporate pension funds on its investment strategy. Niels founded Absolute Return Partners in 2002 and is Chief Investment Officer. He is a graduate of University of Copenhagen with a Masters Degree in economics.