High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Active management (also called active investing) refers to a portfolio management strategy where the manager makes specific investments with the goal of outperforming an investment benchmark index. Investors or mutual funds that do not aspire to create a return in excess of a benchmark index will often invest in an index fund that replicates as closely as possible the investment weighting and returns of that index; this is called passive management. Active management is the opposite of passive management, because in passive management the manager does not seek to outperform the benchmark index.