Do asset managers provide value? What's the evidence?
Hundreds of trillions of dollars are managed by asset management firms, according to this PWC article. The fees paid on those trillions must be enormous. I understand that if you are investing a lot of money, you want to make sure the investment is done right .... however it doesn't take much brains to invest properly, because you can just copy the market and buy into an index fund, and it seems to beat a lot of managed funds. EDIT:  I forgot to mention: any such evidence must obviously account for fees. It's not enough to show that their return is marginally better (which it might not even be).