Lootman wrote:Hariseldon58 wrote:
An interesting use of the word "bias" there. I would normally take the view that a cap-weighted tracker has no bias. And that to try and skew or tilt that index in favour of (say) smallcaps or Japan is introducing bias.
As for the concentration you cite, that is true of many markets, and the breadth and depth of the US market actually ensures that no one share dominates in the way that can happen elsewhere. For instance Apple and MicroSoft, both with a market cap approaching $3 trillion, are maybe 7% each of the S&P 500. Under-weighting either at any previous point of time would have been a mistake. In fact both of them are seen as defensive holdings because of their strong cashflows and fortress balance sheets - for example Apple can afford to pay out $100 billion a year in dividends and buybacks.
US share of the developed world index is far higher than the past, valuations are generally much higher amongst US large caps, concentrated holdings are not unusual but the companies concerned often change frequently….
There are alternative views about how indexes are weighted , eg RAFI ( fundamental indexes weighting on various economic factored rather just price) these give a very different index.
The World market index was dominated in the late 80’s by Japanese equities to an extraordinary extent. Didn’t end well….
Underweighting the big winners of the recent era is a bad idea at present but that could change and my view is to take a long term view and add diversity.
I still have a decent 7 figure sum in market cap world indexes so I haven’t given up on them by any means.
I have some interesting data from the AIC that shows the performance of various Investment Trusts compared to the FTSE All World over various time periods 1,3,5 and 10 years , looking at a number of data points between 2007 and 2017, that cover many overlapping periods over 20 years you won’t find evidence that the World Tracker is the obvious choice.
We should consider the possibility that a World Index dominated by a small number of companies from one country might not be the only choice for satisfactory long term investment returns.