1. The asset management industry collectively plays a near-zero-sum game.  By contrast, most industries are positive sum: if you eat a great steak dinner, it doesn’t imply that others have to eat hamburger.  In asset management, each new Money Manager that is able to generate Alpha (returns above the passive benchmark performance) normally does so at the expense of other Money Managers who underperform.  Your own investment’s value may change because of a change in value of the underlying asset and/or market preferences.  However, few investors can impact the value of the underlying asset, except for typically private equity and venture capital investors.  And only celebrity investors like George Soros can influence market preferences.  In fact, it is mathematically impossible for the median investor in a given publicly-traded sector to beat a low-cost index of that sector, after expenses.  Money managers playing a positive-sum game include those who focus on well-developed sectors for which indices are not readily available (e.g., private companies, frontier markets) and/or nascent asset classes (e.g., internet domain names, lifetime individual income, litigation finance, virtual currencies, cryptocurrencies, divorce loans, receivables, patents,  frequent loans, receivables, patents, frequent  flyer miles, timber, farms/ranches, art, collectibles, or carbon credits.