Warnings that index funds have broken the stock market all imply a threshold: a share of the market at which price discovery fails. Nobody making the argument names it. Owen Lamont, writing in the Financial Analysts Journal, argues that no such number exists short of complete passive ownership, and that what actually determines whether prices stay informative is who is left doing the trading. His case, the strongest peer-reviewed research against it, and what the performance
Yes, annual management fees for actively managed funds are far higher than they are for index funds. But it’s the linked costs of active funds that people don’t consider, and those can be even more significant. Anyone who uses so-called budget airlines will be familiar with what economists call linked costs, or junk fees as Americans tend to call them. Linked costs are secondary expenses that arise as a result of buying a primary product or service. So, for instance, you
Robin Powell
Dec 11, 20244 min read
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