I'm an index fund investor. I passively hold a reasonably static portfolio that's diversified across companies, industries and asset categories. It happens to be I who created the particular index that I invest in (which doesn't make it any less of a passive index fund than some of its better-known, commercially-available brethren). The only real difference that I can see between the Pancake Industrial Average and a fund like the Vanguard S&P 500 Index (VOO) is that unlike the latter, the Pancake Industrial Average was tailored specifically to suit me, my beliefs, and