By Brendan Conway

Its man again the machine, where man is a stock-picking fund manager and machine is the passive index fund. So far, machine is winning handily.

But if you cant beat the machine, get mechanized. That, in any event, is one way to look at the trend of actively managed ETFs, where stockpickers are looking to ply their trade in a different, hopefully more efficient format.

REUTERS Getting mechanized, sort of

Correction: Theyre still looking to do it. As Ari I. Weinberg points out in an overview of the trend in the Wall Street Journal, this is one of those ideas thats been coming for years, and yet it hasnt quite caught on. Weinberg  rightly notes actively managed ETFs are a so-far tiny realm that has gotten outsized attention in spite of it.

Even so, the timing might finally be ripe, Weinberg argues. T his year weve already got State Street  (STT ) and MFS Investment Management teaming up to launch a trio of actively managed stock picking ETFs. AdvisorShares. an early mover, has also increased its offerings:

Others that have entered the arena include BlackRock Inc.s iShares, Columbia Management, Invesco PowerShares and Cambria Investment Management Inc.

Meanwhile, USAA Asset Management. a unit of San Antonio-based USAA. has applied to the Securities and Exchange Commission for a handful of active equity ETFs, including several that closely align with existing equity and balanced funds.

So why arent more mutual-fund companies rushing to offer ETF versions of existing stock funds? One of the things holding them back is the current requirement that active ETFs, which trade on exchanges like stocks, disclose their portfolio holdings daily. Many fund managers fear that revealing their daily trades would make their funds more vulnerable to front-running—a situation in which opportunistic traders might push prices higher when they see a fund buying shares of a company, or hedge funds and others might short the ETF.

Others are concerned that lower-fee ETFs could cannibalize their existing business.

Heres the trick: Will investors care? Its difficult to beat a stock index, and ETF investors already have a bevy of passive investment options which attempt much the same thing. Weinberg explains:

The long odds facing active managers are reflected in data from the S&P Indices Versus Active Funds Scorecard from McGraw Hill Financials S&P Dow Jones Indices. Over a five-year period through June 2013, almost three-quarters of U.S. active stock funds failed to outperform the S&P 1500 composite on a total-return basis.

Meanwhile, money is pouring into smart beta ETFs, which aim to beat the market by following a new generation of indexes designed to approximate fundamental stock-picking approaches. In some ways these funds, which account for nearly 10% of all U.S.-listed ETF assets, address the hope inherent in traditional active stock picking minus the higher fees.

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