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
The United States now accounts for about 62 per cent of world stock market value. The last market this dominant was Britain in 1900, not America — and Britain's owners were rewarded through a century of decline, while Japan's were made to wait 34 years to break even. The difference was not size but the price paid at the peak. A look at what the long-run evidence says about US stock market dominance, and what it means for a globally diversified investor.
Robin Powell
Jun 138 min read
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