some investors have once again quietly voiced concern about the inordinate and rising influence passive investing in general, and ETFs in particular, exert on stocks but especially on fixed income securities, including illiquid bonds and loans. To address some of these concerns, earlier last week, Goldman Sachs released a report titled "A closer look at years of passive (aggressive) investing in credit" in which it observed that the growth patterns shown in Exhibits 1 to 3, particularly the increase in the ownership share of ETFs...

.... have consistently raised concerns among fixed income investors and regulators. The fear is that the combined effect of the "liquidity mismatch" inherent to ETFs and a potential abrupt reversal of the inflows of the past several years could prove damaging to the secondary market.