---
title: Risks of Passive Investing
url: https://www.ml-quant.com/papers/ssrn/5259427/
site: ML-Quant (https://www.ml-quant.com)
updated: 2026-09-26
license: Summaries CC BY 4.0; links go to the original sources
index: https://www.ml-quant.com/llms.txt
identifier: SSRN 5259427
source_url: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5259427
featured: 2025-05-21
citations: unknown
topic: Portfolio & Allocation
---


# Risks of Passive Investing

The article suggests that the popularity of passive capitalization-weighted index funds may increase systemic risk and distort prices, and recommends rebalancing to non-price-based weights for better long-term returns.

- Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5259427
- Identifier: SSRN 5259427
- Released: 2025-05-18
- First featured: Quant Letter No. 98 (2025-05-21): https://www.ml-quant.com/issues/2025-05-21/
- Citations (Semantic Scholar): not tracked
- Published in: not yet
- Topic: Portfolio & Allocation

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