"Consolidation" says more than "shrinking" – the latter just concerns itself with the easily visible headline number, while the former implies the mechanism by

"Consolidation" says more than "shrinking" – the latter just concerns itself with the easily visible headline number, while the former implies the mechanism by which that number has changed. Because mergers and acquisitions aren't a new invention, "consolidation" would be hard to proof as the actual cause: quite possibly, m&a has been steady but IPOs have been lower? > But "shrinking" is not only inaccurate, it's arguably clickbait. I don't see how it can be called inaccurate. Just because you (think you) know an explanation for the observed phenomenon does not render that observation inaccurate. I also don't quite believe "the stock market is shrinking" has any of the qualities usually attributed to "clickbait". Let's remember the term was coined for headlines such as "There are ten reasons you will die tomorrow, #12 will be the funniest you've ever heard". > As for not having much visibility into what a company is doing, well that was always true. The article argues rather specifically that being public leads to far better public availability of information for public companies vis-a-vis private ones. It's hard to argue with that point, considering that, yes, we know far more about Apple than, say, Koch Industries.