He points out: “The goal of the non-professional should not be to pick winners – neither he nor his ‘helpers’ can do that – but should rather be to own a cross-section of businesses that in aggregate are bound to do well. A low-cost S&P 500 index fund will achieve this goal.”

The manager adds that his money “is where my mouth is” as instructions in his will are for the trustee of his wife’s inheritance to “put 10 per cent of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90 per cent in a very low cost S&P 500 index fund”.

With such a well-known active stockpicker hailing the benefits of a passive strategy, it is little wonder that the passive side seems to be exploding with new launches and strategies appearing at every turn.

The global exchange-traded product market is currently worth approximately $2.6trn (£1.5trn) at the end of May, according to figures from the BlackRock ETP Landscape report.

Meanwhile, the market is constantly innovating with the advent of multi-strategy, multi-beta offerings from Amundi, and two very specific equity market exposure ETFs from iShares in the form of emerging market consumer growth and higher than average US dividends, to name just a few in the past few weeks alone.

But investors should not be easily distracted by the shiny newness of these different strategies and offerings.

They should still be drilling down into what they do, how they generate returns, but also an increasing focus is on cost.

In this week’s special supplement, Sam Shaw delves into the issue of cost in terms of trackers and ETFs, an issue put in the spotlight by Fidelity’s recent decision to cut the cost of seven index trackers to as low as 0.07 per cent in terms of ongoing charge if bought directly.

This has once again put forward the idea of a price war in the passive space, something also occurring to some extent in the active arena, but with prices getting lower and lower, can anything else be cut? And what are you losing in order to get the cheaper price?

There are always trade-offs and while the days of arguing active versus passive are slowly declining, there will always remain a discrepancy between the two in certain markets and economic cycles that mean blended portfolios are in some cases a no-brainer.

And let’s be honest if its good enough for Warren Buffett, why isn’t it good enough for you?

Nyree Stewart is features editor at Investment Adviser