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
New research from the *Review of Financial Studies* covering 56 years of data and eight asset classes shows that the popular inflation hedge — shares, gold, property funds, commodities — only protects against energy inflation. The slow, grinding core inflation that actually erodes purchasing power year after year goes unhedged. Here's what the data say, why the investment industry hasn't fixed it, and what to do instead.
Robin Powell
May 118 min read
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