But if they're passive, are are they supposed to influence behavior? They can't dump the stock, because they're obligated to hold that stock to track a particular index.
Sorta. They have power by virtue of aggregated votes. The vast majority of people don’t submit their preference for proxy so the passives end up with these huge voting blocks. They either end up rolling with whatever majority they did get on the patchy submissions they got or they make a judgement call
So yeah on paper they are just conduits but they are not as powerless as they would have you believe. Anyone sitting on billions has some power even if they don’t actively move it
