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Index funds : everyone is going the same direction
Index funds have exploded in popularity for good reason—they’re cheap, easy to buy, and have historically outperformed most actively managed funds. But people are forgetting one crucial fact: past performance does not guarantee future results. The stock market doesn’t care about your neat little charts showing average annual returns. And while the S&P 500 has indeed delivered solid returns over the long run, there have been brutal stretches where it’s gone nowhere. Just ask anyone who invested during the 2000s and saw their portfolio flatline or lose value for ten years.
Today, we’re walking into a similar trap. Money is flooding into index funds like never before. These funds now control over 60% of the U.S. stock market. But what happens when everyone piles into the same investment? Valuations get bloated, returns get squeezed, and eventually, the whole thing comes crashing down. If you think the stock market is a guaranteed money machine, think again. It’s setting up to punish those who are following the crowd without thinking.
If I look at the price-earnings ratio on the S&P 500, it’s in the 99th percentile compared to the last 30 years. But if you think stocks are expensive, have you looked at bonds recently? And if you compare the valuation of stocks -- that PE ratio, and you can invert it and look at the yield, which makes an easier comparison -- with bond yields and in particular real rates -- the yield you get on bonds after inflation -- then you get to the conclusion that it’s in the bottom 1%. So stocks are as cheap as they’ve ever been.