The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that despite overwhelming evidence that index funds beat most actively managed funds over the long haul, investors still shy away from passive investing. The Globe's Ian McGugan writes that there are signs investors are gradually waking up to what they have been missing, but it has taken a long time. In the United States, index funds finally achieved dominance only this past month. Canadians, though, are nowhere close: Indexing held a mere 15.5 per cent of the Canadian market at the end of 2022. The widely accepted efficient market hypothesis says that the market does a fine job of incorporating public information into share prices. If the market is efficient, then most investors cannot expect to outperform it, no matter how much research they do. People love lotteries. They cherish the notion that they have a chance of becoming wealthy overnight thanks to their investment in bitcoin, tech stocks, gold miners or whatever. Index investing does not play to that fantasy. Investors should take a close look at index investing. Vanguard's balanced index portfolio (VBAL) or the equivalent from iShares (XBAL) are excellent places to begin your inspection of the index universe.