with imperfect knowledge it's a solid choice for nearly every situation
I see no reason to believe so. Do you have evidence or arguments to support this naked assertion? What other choices are you comparing it against?
Do you have evidence or arguments to support this naked assertion?
From Index Fund Advisors:
More than a hundred years of academic research points to index funds as an investor's best investment.
They have several recommendations by Nobel laureates on that page, and have a index of papers here. As a general comment, the Efficient Markets Hypothesis is relevant: unless your money manager is insider trading (and if you, as a customer, know about that, then probably so does the SEC), you should not expect them to do significantly better than the market as...
P/S/A: There are single sentences which can create life-changing amounts of difference.