Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a fair point that the inclusion criteria are applied consistently, not arbitrarily. But I fundamentally disagree with their inclusion criteria. It was designed for traditional companies with low growth and high GAAP profitability, not high-growth companies rapidly reinvesting into the core business. Amazon is infamous for having positive cash-flow yet running near-zero GAAP earnings for nearly two decades, bec…
You can just buy the stock, you know. Nobody is keeping it off the exchanges. Or you can buy another fund that includes it.
The benchmark has much more use than just a list of stocks passive investors should blindly follow.