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The Growing Peril of Index Funds: Too Much Tech

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Re: The Growing Peril of Index Funds: Too Much Tech

#71
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you have $100B, say, you can't put it in a stock that's currently valued at $1B. But if you have $1000, you don't have that constraint. Your argument is that there is a mispriced security somewhere that can be bought at a low price. There is currently only 1B$ of it available and so the professional manager with 100B$ to spend just doesn't bother to pick up that money. But you with just 1000$ can do it instead. W…

Every cap weighted fund has a cutoff where it omits companies that are too small. But even the stocks that are barely large enough to include don't contribute much to returns. I don't think the small cap stock is "mispriced". Rather, it has a different value for different investors, and the market price is a compromise. That means different investors should probably have a different amount of it in a portfolio. It's…

I think you're arguing a point that isn't even being brought up in this thread or in the article.

Of course it's just fine to have an index fund that's weighted towards certain types of stock, e.g. there's the S&P 500, then various "woldwide" funds, EU-weighted funds etc. The risks & benefits of those are well understood. Nobody argues that different types of index funds shouldn't exist.

Similarly, there's funds that cater to specific regulations, e.g. investing heavily in "green" stocks which may be subsidized by the government, or avoiding certain taxes (e.g. lower turnover for lower capital gains).

Both of those are categorically different from supposing that you know better than other people that tech stock in 2017 is overvalued, and trying to move away from that in favor of something else. Now you're making an active investment move which history shows you're more likely to lose on as gain anything on.

Re: The Growing Peril of Index Funds: Too Much Tech

#72
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you have $100B, say, you can't put it in a stock that's currently valued at $1B. But if you have $1000, you don't have that constraint. Your argument is that there is a mispriced security somewhere that can be bought at a low price. There is currently only 1B$ of it available and so the professional manager with 100B$ to spend just doesn't bother to pick up that money. But you with just 1000$ can do it instead. W…

Every cap weighted fund has a cutoff where it omits companies that are too small. But even the stocks that are barely large enough to include don't contribute much to returns. I don't think the small cap stock is "mispriced". Rather, it has a different value for different investors, and the market price is a compromise. That means different investors should probably have a different amount of it in a portfolio. It's…

>Every cap weighted fund has a cutoff where it omits companies that are too small.

The whole market isn't just S&P500 funds, if it was there wouldn't be much price discovery. But in the S&P500 I bet most cap weighted funds actually hold all the assets.

>I don't think the small cap stock is "mispriced".

For your argument to hold it has to be. Specifically it has to be priced lower than it should so that an equal weighted fund can outperform a cap weighted fund. If that was the case the large fund manager should pick up that opportunity anyway, even if he can only do it in a lesser percentage of his portfolio than the retail investor. When that then happens those opportunities disappear.

>That's a good thing, but it doesn't justify pretending you don't know things that you do know.

The problem is that you haven't named a single thing a retail investor knows that the 100B$ fund manager doesn't and can't take advantage of.

Re: The Growing Peril of Index Funds: Too Much Tech

#73
Balancing your portfolio with domestic (US) and international index funds would seem to take care of that since.

I'm currently 60/20/20 US/International/Bonds IIRC.

If the US market is mostly tech and tech bottoms out when I want to retire, I won't be completely wiped out.

I also plan to semi-retire early and work a lower stress job between 40/50 and 65 so I'll be less under the gun than someone who needs sell stock and can't tighten their belt.

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