Thank you very much Daemon for your response and your kind words.

To answer your question, what I meant by those was that the index doesn't change in response to market developments (aside from the obvious, that it goes up or down as the stocks that make it up change in value).

For example, I believe tech has had such an incredible run over the last 7 years, that it's unlikely to continue that streak much further. As a result of that opinion, I reallocated my portfolio such that my tech exposure is about half of what it was in 2020, and less than the S&P 500's 24.62%.

Similarly, growth investing has been ascendant for years now, with value stocks returning far less. As a result, I believe we will likely see those two switch in the not too distant future. This is why I went from a portfolio heavily weighted toward growth to one with less than 45% growth.

If I was an index fund investor I'd be stuck with whatever allocation the index has for tech, for growth, etc.

Of course I could sell my investment in index funds at will, but if I want to stay invested, and don't want to pick actively managed funds, I'd have to stay in the index and accept whatever results that brought.

As a disclaimer, none of the above should be considered investment advice. It's simply my opinion, and an explanation of how I think as an investor. And as I sometimes tell friends, that and $4 will get you a nice cup of coffee at Starbucks :).