Indexing is a powerful tool for investors. It is inexpensive to manage and absolutely transparent, and is a generally well diversified approach to the broader markets. More importantly, there is strong evidence that index investing, in the long run, outperforms the majority of active investment strategies.
Over the past 30 years, index investing has become increasingly more popular by large institutions and retail investors, through index mutual funds, and more recently, the growth of exchange-traded funds. The majority of these funds follow the traditional indexes, such as the S&P 500 and S&P/TSX 60, which are market capitalization-weighted indexes.