Index funds were first considered nonsense.
Index funds are probably the most enduring and transformative innovation for individual investors since mutual funds became available to them in 1928.
When the first index fund for individuals made its debut in 1976, it started the process of making investing simpler and more understandable to regular people.
Index funds also revealed one of Wall Street’s secrets—that high-cost mutual funds run by highly paid managers hardly ever outperform the market in the long run.
Index funds, on the other hand, let anyone match the market’s return, minus tiny fees that these days are measured in hundredths of a percent of an investor’s holding.
As of June 30, what’s now called Vanguard 500 Index Fund and its sister ETF had total assets of $1.5 trillion—that’s trillion, with a t. Vanguard’s total-stock-market index fund and its affiliated ETF had a combined $1.9 trillion of assets.
Allan Sloan Wall Sreet Journal Sept. 23, 2025
“A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2022/04/borsapan-slog-bade-fondproffsen-och.html
Buying at any price simply isn’t good capitalism.
“Passive investors have no opinion about value. They’re going to assume everybody else has done the work.” Meanwhile, Charles Gave of Gavekal Research avers in as many words that “indexation will destroy capitalism.”
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/02/index-funds-keep-blowing-what-looks.html
Could Index Funds Be ‘Worse Than Marxism’?
One primary concern comes from the analysts at Bernstein: “A supposedly capitalist economy where the only investment is passive is worse than either a centrally planned economy or an economy with active, market-led capital management.”
The point of their research note, if rendered a touch inscrutable with references to Hayek and the Gossnab, is about market signals and capital allocation.
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2022/05/could-index-funds-be-worse-than-marxism.html
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