The future is upon us—at least that’s a key message in this issue of The Analyst, which closes off 2014 and looks ahead to the coming months and years. Flipping through the pages of this issue, here are four things you’ll learn about what the future holds:

1. Active management will rule – In Devin Crago’s excellent report on this year’s Forecast Dinner, he tackles several predictions made about what’s in store for investors, including value investor Charles Brandes’ message: In this low return environment, active management will see a resurgence as investors realize the inherent challenges in passive strategies.
2. Retail investors might get their own funded ratio – In “Advice or Price,” author Keith Pangretitsch, discusses the impact of the Client Relationship Model 2 on key areas of the advisor–client relationship, not the least of which is what client statements will look like once the new performance reporting guidelines kick in. He makes an astute point: perhaps it’s time for investors to see investment performance reported relative to a retirement-funded ratio rather than just an external benchmark. Good idea. After all, a lot of defined benefit pension funds have been doing it, why not retail investors?
3. Hedge funds could lower the gate – In his article, “The Future of Investing,” Irfan Chaudhry makes the case that investors’ post-2008 obsession with liquidity will have them avoiding more illiquid approaches such as distressed and event-driven strategies. In contrast, the big winners will be those funds that focus on relatively more liquid strategies such as liquid global macro, long/short equity, and managed futures strategies.
4. Big data will be big business – In “Big Data, Big Banks,” Victoria Barclay covers the algorithms that are helping organizations quickly sift through the massive universe of data in order to turn it into something that can be used by governments, businesses, and investors. The future is filled with data that needs to be sorted and analyzed—fast.