Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds • Hacker News Board

Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds

#231

Post by zimablue » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:23 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #29

gregorymichael wrote: post #2

A bit click-baity, but the warning here from the father-of-index-funds is not that they've become a bad investment, but that their popularity is leading toward a handful of financial institutions holding controlling interests in most of the largest companies. Pretty interesting unitended consequence.

How do these financial institutions vote their shares?

A lot of them outsource voting decisions to companies which exist just to aggregate the most "corporate/sensible" way to vote. So the parent saying "they're not activist investors" is probably true, but then every single vote proceeding along "maximise profit according to a consensus view" lines probably isn't great for society.

Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds

#232

Post by turc1656 » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

gomox wrote: post #199

turc1656 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

jkulubya's comment is largely correct. And you most likely do understand what an index fund is. It's just that most people don't realize there are two sides to the product - the theoretical and the real. The index is a theoretical product (intellectual property). The fund is the real-world implementation. A fund manager takes a look at one of our S&P products and says "I want to make a fund off this" and S&P contract…

Very interesting. I always assumed that the SP500 index composition was some sort of loss leader for SP where the brand awareness created by the SP500 name served as proof of legitimacy for some other service. Never thought the index composition could be a cash cow in itself. Im intrigued at how the IP is protected, in legal terms (i.e. what exactly is copyrighted or patented or trademarked or trade secrets), if you…

I think my other comment to someone else in this thread addresses most of what you are asking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18572584

Anything deeper would require an actual lawyer to weigh in.

Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds

#233

Post by xxpor » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

newnewpdro wrote: post #173

chimeracoder wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Believe it or not, sometimes products are unloaded on one coast, transported by rail, then loaded on a ship on the other coast. That is surprising, since shipping by water is dramatically cheaper than any other form of surface shipping, even factoring the extra distance to sail down to the Panama Canal. What's the point of adding the land leg?

Isn't passage through the Panama Canal expensive?

Expensive in absolute terms, yes.

Based on the calculator here:

https://www.wilhelmsen.com/tollcalculators/panama-toll-calcu...

It costs $1,196,397.54 for the largest possible ship to go though.

That's for 13,000 TEUs though (so 6500 standard containers) That's $184 per container. Now think about how much a container holds, and per item for sale it becomes pretty cheap.

Re: Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds

#234

Post by smileysteve » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #227

smileysteve wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Defending an unmanned vehicle is the walls vs guards argument: it's far harder to build an impassible, unguarded wall than it is to build a difficult, guarded one. When it comes to shooting out an engine block, you're already past difficult. If you're blasting the doors, you're already past difficult. But most of all, a truck driver is not a guard. Very few guards are guards of things that are insured. Driver, staf…

>>> So, how does a single, or even a 2 driver truck prevent this TODAY >> See my last paragraph. > The risk to stealing is directly proportional to the chance of getting caught, which broadly correlates into something unexpected happening, which is drastically diminished by not having a human driver. You're missing the forest for the trees. A human witness is a deterrent because our court system says they are. "Sir /…

We're not debating the technical arguments; we seem to be disagreeing and just how close to anarchy we are.