Nobody can establish who first used the phrase 'evidence-based investing', and no regulator defines it. Robin Powell, who was given the name by Larry Swedroe in 2015 and is sometimes wrongly credited with coining it, sets out what it actually means: four tests of what counts as evidence, borrowed from a medical parallel that hit the same crisis twelve years ago. Including where he goes further than a global tracker, and why he holds that position less firmly than he used to.
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
Robin Powell
Aug 37 min read
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