Victor Haghani uses the puzzle of the missing billionaires to help us explore how and why most investors fail to capture the returns offered by the market. He puts forward a simple but powerful solution for those who aren’t satisfied with the status quo: it’s called “Active Index Investing.” This approach combines the best features of low-cost index funds with the appealing and successful aspects of active management, all for 1/10th the price that many investors currently pay.

Victor Haghani has spent nearly 30 years actively involved in markets and financial innovation. He started his career in 1984 in bond portfolio analysis research at Salomon Brothers, and later became a managing director in the bond arbitrage group run by John Meriwether. In 1993, Victor became a founding partner of Long-Term Capital Management. His participation in the failure of LTCM was a life-changing experience that led him to question and revise much of the way he thought about the economy, markets and investing.

Since that time, he’s been involved in a variety of activities, including research and lecturing at the London School of Economics (his alma mater), where he is a senior research associate in the Financial Markets Group. Through a careful study of the academic literature on investing and many thought-provoking discussions with friends, colleagues, and investors of all backgrounds, Victor concluded that savers can and should do much better. He founded Elm Partners in 2011 to help investors manage their savings in an efficient and disciplined manner, and to capture the long term returns they ought to earn.

Video courtesy of TedX.