Quote:
Originally Posted by SonicFlyer
This is the problem with many of them:
"Total market index funds are typically “cap-weighted”. In English, that means that most of your money, when invested, goes into the largest companies based on market capitalization. So if I buy a mutual fund investing in the entire US stock market I might own over 3,000 stocks, but most of the money I invested goes to buying companies like Apple, Exxon, GE, Chevron, IBM and other massive US firms.
That may sound good to some investors. “Great, I own the most successful US companies. Now I can sleep easily.” Here’s the problem. Concentrating too much money in ANY one area of the market can lead to less than desirable results over long periods of time. Case in point: From 1966 through 1982, the S&P 500 (another popular cap-weighted index) had an annualized return of 0% per year when inflation is considered. From 2000 through 2012, the index lost .7% per year to inflation. Those are long stretches of time to go without returns, especially if you depend on your investments for income.
What is important to understand is that different areas of the market, which are not well represented by these funds, did quite well during these periods in history. Smaller companies, which only make up a tiny fraction of the holdings of total market funds, can be the real game saver when large stocks go through their periodic seasons of draught. We also need to recognize, as investors, that the biggest and most important companies of today will likely become the “has-beens” of tomorrow due to changes in technology and competition. "
SOURCE:
An Easier Way To Invest? ? Paul Winkler, Inc
The reason you have the most money in a particular set of companies on a market cap weighted fund is because they GREW to that spot. And so did your money along with it. AAPL wasn’t always at the top.... If you choose another method then you’re looking for a small cap index, perhaps where the next Apple and Amazon will grow into their size, but there are likely to be wild fluctuations and greater risk associated. The S&P 500 or total stock index are hands down the best option we have available to us to “set it and forget it”. You can always zoom in on a particular point in time on a chart and say “HA, look at the lack of growth here” then I can zoom in on 2008-present day and say “HA, look at all this growth in the S&P” AND THEN we can zoom all the way out and see that, in general, the market has gone up over its life. So for us younger guys with decades ahead of us, it’s our safest bet. Runner up are target retirement funds, but they bring more managers into it and thus higher fees.
You cite Mr Winkler, so I’ll cite Mr Buffett;
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“Let me give you a figure that’ll blow your mind I think. I bought my first stock when I was 11 years old. It was the first quarter of 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor,” Buffett recalls. “I spent $114.75, [for] shares [of a stock.] $114.75. If I put that $114 into the S&P 500 at that time and reinvested the dividends, think of a figure as to what it…would be worth today,” he asked me?
So, what do think?
$10,000?
$75,000?
I’ll give you some help. That’s way low.
Let’s pick it up with Buffett again: “The answer is about $400,000. So if I as a little kid had taken that 114 bucks I’d saved— shoveling snow (LAUGH) or whatever I’d done, [I’d have] $400,000 today. [In] one person’s lifetime. That’s America. I mean, that isn’t me. You know, it’s the huge tailwind the American economy gives to any equity investor.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-says-couldve-turned-114-400000-230140222.html
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