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I'm not saying churn is a bad thing per se, I'm saying it renders any naive usage of the S&P as a proxy for company returns introduces a huge dollop of survivor

by simonh 5y ago

I'm not saying churn is a bad thing per se, I'm saying it renders any naive usage of the S&P as a proxy for company returns introduces a huge dollop of survivorship bias. You're adding up all the increased returns of the companies that did well and culling out any influence on the stats from companies that did sufficiently poorly, which is about half of the companies.

gruez 5y ago
>I'm saying it renders any naive usage of the S&P as a proxy for company returns introduces a huge dollop of survivorship bias. You're adding up all the increased returns of the companies that did well and culling out any influence on the stats from companies that did sufficiently poorly, which is about half of the companies. I'm fairly sure that's factored into the indexing methodology[1]. In other words, they're not just adding up all the market caps of the 500 companies and calling it a day. This seems to be confirmed in the price data. The s&p 500 index grew by 300.9% from july 2011 to july 2021. In the same time period, The share price of VOO (an S&P 500 index fund) went up 302.4%[2][3]. In other words, the returns of the index very closely tracks the returns had you invested (unless you think the VOO fund has the ability to print money). [1] https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/methodology-sp-us-indices.pdf https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/me... [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/spx/charts?mod=mw_quote_advanced https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/spx/charts?mod=m... [3] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/voo/charts?mod=mw_quote_advanced https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/voo/charts?mod=mw...
- simonh 5y ago
  I'm not sure you understand my point. All the companies this article is talking about are listed and have shareholders. It's not about publicly listed versus anything else, it's about the different results from listed companies with different governance models. That aside, if I bought a share in every company that was in the S&P 500 in 2013 and tracked their returns to now, only half of those shares would still even be in the S&P 500. The return on those that dropped out of it aren't reflected in the S&P 500 results, but they still matter from the POV of long term shareholder returns. You can't just exclude failing companies from the statistics and pretend that the stats are still valid and everything is rosy in investorland. That's sweeping under the rug on a massive scale. Anyway investors in index funds aren't owners of the underlying shares and don't have any relationship with those companies. The article is about that notional ownership relationship between shareholders and companies, so index funds just aren't relevant to this discussion even if their performance was relevant (it isn't) or meaningful with respect to individual share ownership (also not). The article does reference actual long term like for like studies of company performance. I'd love to see the results from updated studies.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > Anyway investors in index funds aren't owners of the underlying shares and don't have any relationship with those companies. Why do people buy index funds?
    - simonh 5y ago
      What's that got to do with the reasons why people buy individual shares, and the obligations of companies to those people relative to other stakeholders such as bond holder, creditors, directors, managers and employees?
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        I do not know, but I did not intend to imply anything with my question. My question was to find out what incentive people have to purchase index funds if they “aren't owners of the underlying shares and don't have any relationship with those companies.”
        simonh 5y ago
        They want reliable returns.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - toast0 5y ago
      I think the quoted statement is as true as investors in companies aren't owners of the underlying bank accounts and don't have any relationship with those banks. It's true that an index fund investor doesn't get to vote in company elections, get company reports, etc. But the funds generally follow their policies and what not, so it provides a lower effort way to invest in a multitude of companies. The current regime of zero comissions and fractional share trading makes it more possible to self index, but it's a lot less work to buy shares in one of the many competing low-cost index funds.
xcdfgvd 5y ago
The article makes the point that shareholders have suffered while "Shareholder Value" was touted. History promptly proved otherwise. Survivorship introduces bias relative to the performance of the average company, but not to the performance of the average shareholder's portfolio. The largest ETFs have been S&P 500 ETFs since 2013; the index is the best readily available proxy for average investor returns.

by simonh 5y ago

gruez 5y ago

>I'm saying it renders any naive usage of the S&P as a proxy for company returns introduces a huge dollop of survivorship bias. You're adding up all the increased returns of the companies that did well and culling out any influence on the stats from companies that did sufficiently poorly, which is about half of the companies. I'm fairly sure that's factored into the indexing methodology[1]. In other words, they're not just adding up all the market caps of the 500 companies and calling it a day. This seems to be confirmed in the price data. The s&p 500 index grew by 300.9% from july 2011 to july 2021. In the same time period, The share price of VOO (an S&P 500 index fund) went up 302.4%[2][3]. In other words, the returns of the index very closely tracks the returns had you invested (unless you think the VOO fund has the ability to print money). [1] https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/methodology-sp-us-indices.pdf https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/me... [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/spx/charts?mod=mw_quote_advanced https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/spx/charts?mod=m... [3] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/voo/charts?mod=mw_quote_advanced https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/voo/charts?mod=mw...

simonh 5y ago
I'm not sure you understand my point. All the companies this article is talking about are listed and have shareholders. It's not about publicly listed versus anything else, it's about the different results from listed companies with different governance models. That aside, if I bought a share in every company that was in the S&P 500 in 2013 and tracked their returns to now, only half of those shares would still even be in the S&P 500. The return on those that dropped out of it aren't reflected in the S&P 500 results, but they still matter from the POV of long term shareholder returns. You can't just exclude failing companies from the statistics and pretend that the stats are still valid and everything is rosy in investorland. That's sweeping under the rug on a massive scale. Anyway investors in index funds aren't owners of the underlying shares and don't have any relationship with those companies. The article is about that notional ownership relationship between shareholders and companies, so index funds just aren't relevant to this discussion even if their performance was relevant (it isn't) or meaningful with respect to individual share ownership (also not). The article does reference actual long term like for like studies of company performance. I'd love to see the results from updated studies.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Anyway investors in index funds aren't owners of the underlying shares and don't have any relationship with those companies. Why do people buy index funds?
  - simonh 5y ago
    What's that got to do with the reasons why people buy individual shares, and the obligations of companies to those people relative to other stakeholders such as bond holder, creditors, directors, managers and employees?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I do not know, but I did not intend to imply anything with my question. My question was to find out what incentive people have to purchase index funds if they “aren't owners of the underlying shares and don't have any relationship with those companies.”
      - simonh 5y ago
        They want reliable returns.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - toast0 5y ago
    I think the quoted statement is as true as investors in companies aren't owners of the underlying bank accounts and don't have any relationship with those banks. It's true that an index fund investor doesn't get to vote in company elections, get company reports, etc. But the funds generally follow their policies and what not, so it provides a lower effort way to invest in a multitude of companies. The current regime of zero comissions and fractional share trading makes it more possible to self index, but it's a lot less work to buy shares in one of the many competing low-cost index funds.

xcdfgvd 5y ago

The article makes the point that shareholders have suffered while "Shareholder Value" was touted. History promptly proved otherwise. Survivorship introduces bias relative to the performance of the average company, but not to the performance of the average shareholder's portfolio. The largest ETFs have been S&P 500 ETFs since 2013; the index is the best readily available proxy for average investor returns.