Comment by throwaway85825

6 months ago

The suckers being fleeced are every pension fund in the world. They're demanding the S&P includes them faster to force ETF owners to buy in before the price tanks.

God forbid we participants in the stock market evaluate a business before investing in it, or do any sort of work to get the return we're promised.

I, for one, much prefer to earn a 9% return without expending any effort or thought at all.

  • For most people their talent and expertise does not involve investing. That's why pensions and 401ks exist and why S&P/nasdaq have rules to protect the public.

  • You may wish it were not so, you may find it inelegant and infuriating and unfair, but it is a fact that retail investors nearly all underperform the market over a long enough time horizon. Maybe you are built different but for most of us it is very rational to take the market return for “free”.

    • Do understand, though, that market return will struggle to achieve 9% for the coming decades. A 9% annualised return would put the US stock market at 50% of world GDP in 10 years (edit: 20) and something like 90% of world GDP in 30 years (edit: 50 years). Cost of goods, and your customer's money, both have to come out of global GDP too.

      (The current value of around 25% of global GDP doesn't even include the 1.75 trillion SpaceX which alone would be another almost 1%...)

      ETF expense ratios are small but still mean retail will underperform anyway. It's an unfortunate situation all around.

      1 reply →

Why are they being fleeced? If people didn't want to buy SpaceX they could buy some other ETF that doesn't include it. If there's enough of a demand I'm sure ETFs will be offered which include all the big indexed stocks except SpaceX.

  • Yes Americans will definitely move their 401k over this /s

    Its fleecing because it basically takes everybody's money and gives it to support musk's money loser xai. SpaceX net profit 8 billion per year (previous years much less) and Xai was net losing 1.5 billion per quarter.