Barry Ritholtz, founder of Ritholtz Wealth Management, commented in one of his regular Bloomberg columns that the hype about passive investing taking over the investing world is just that - hype.

Required: Critically appraise the arguments as to whether fund managers should use purely passive investment strategies such as exchange traded funds (ETFs) or index funds or whether investors should use, for example, a combination of active and passive strategies or incorporate recent trends such as Smart Beta when constructing a portfolio. Use your own examples of what you might recommend in constructing such a portfolio.