▲ 40 points
back
33 comments
I wonder if this isn't just a matter of inflation being under reported because it's an easy metric to game while revenue and profits from companies are not.
In the US the official inflation figure between 2019 and 2025 was 28%, but I feel like most people "on the ground" are seeing a much higher inflation rate in housing, food and transportation.
So the stock market is effectively a somewhat doped inflation indicator because SP500 outperforms in general.
>In the US the official inflation figure between 2019 and 2025 was 28%, but I feel like most people "on the ground" are seeing a much higher inflation rate in housing, food and transportation.
People's vibes are notoriously inaccurate. The most famous one is perceptions of crime, which (prior to covid) been dropping for decades, but you wouldn't get that impression from asking the average joe on the street. Same if you asked people basic economic figures like whether the stock market is up or down.
Jeff Bezos: "I have a saying, which is when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. And it doesn’t mean you just slavishly go follow the anecdotes then. It means you go examine the data because it’s usually not that the data is being miscollected, it’s usually that you’re not measuring the right thing."
https://lexfridman.com/jeff-bezos-transcript
Most crime statistics aren't very reliable because so many crimes aren't officially reported. The only one I really trust is the murder rate since it's still hard to hide a body. That rate was flat or declining from 1999 - 2019, then spiked back up in 2020 when many police forces kind of gave up on actually enforcing law and order.
> it’s usually that you’re not measuring the right thing."
Agree. We shouldn't be asking laypeople's opinion on economic figures when they shift wildly with election results.
https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20250222_FNC...
Maybe you are right actually, I fact checked myself and seems like while there is a slight underestimate, it's still nowhere near the stock market returns (roughly 100%).
Housing (34%): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS New car (38%): https://caredge.com/guides/new-car-price-trends-in-2025 Food (29%): https://www.in2013dollars.com/Food-and-beverages/price-infla...
Crime rates are largely inaccurate since 2021: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/13/fbi-crime-rate...
Politicians and certain news sources are of course taking advantage of this, reporting how much crime is "down" when all anecdotal evidence in front of our faces shows the opposite. Crime is not down - there is just a huge reporting gap in the data.
>Crime rates are largely inaccurate since 2021: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/13/fbi-crime-rate...
That's why I specifically said "prior to covid". Moreover what's your point here? People were wrong for 3 decades, but because they turned out to be right eventually it's fine? Seems dubious. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
My anecdotal finding is good is closer to 40-60 percent more than in 2019. Perhaps the food staples haven’t gone up quite as much but everything else has.
IMO, this is exactly what is happening. Near as I can tell, S&P500 is actually almost neutral if we count inflation.
Also, we’re very likely to get a replay of the late 70’s (leading to the early 80’s) soon if Trump gets what he wants with the Fed.
He wants to inflate out of this mess, and I suspect he’ll get what he wants.
The S&P has almost doubled in 5 years compared to the quoted 30% increase in prices, stock returns are far outstripping inflation.
I have not met anymore whose grocery bill has only gone up 30% during that time. In fact, pretty much nothing I interact with has gone up only 30% in that time eh?
Personal theory: the rise of ETFs as a fallback means that money isn’t leaving the stock market anymore. Instead of people selling off and going to cash, they go to SPY, which doesn’t have the downward pressure on the stock market that going to cash does.
That's the "final theory" given in the article..
Yea, I figured that out after I finished the article.
The dangers of posting before I finish the article.
I love The Atlantic for articles like this.
I've definitely considered liquidity & wealth inequality as reasons behind the resilience & height of the stock market, but I would never have considered the effort of a switch from active to passive brokers.
I guess short-term it means that the stock market just barrels upwards and shrugs off issues that would have resulted in market corrections.
Long-term, my guess is that the first effect of this will be on politics. The stock market is used as an indicator by politicians of consumer confidence and the more resilient the stock market is, the more willing politicians will be to play fast & loose.
> Or that theory could end up being disproved by unforeseen events. It wouldn’t be the first
I love this ending. Too many in the media are certain when no certainty is warranted.
All of our retirement accounts are investing in the stock market. That is why it's untouchable. Where else would our retirement accounts put their money?
While people are retired, they take money from contributors. There’s nothing else going on except whole sections of the newspaper devoted to gossip about minute stock changes. The DJIA and S&P and other baskets follow 401k contributions like a random walk.
Crypto may be opening up new avenues for leveraging. So this may be like the pre 1929 & 1930s stock crashes which were partly fueled by excessive leverage and the impact of tariffs for the second crash.
It knows that there are far too many powerful players in market, who are far too emotionally invested in Numbers Go Up - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41423231
And what evidence is there to support that the cause is emotional investment instead of passive, detached investment that's actually driving the majority of the market?
I think it’s a result of the concentration of wealth.
Lots of wealthy people invest their capital and live off 2-3%, while the portfolio is expected to average 7-11%. They choose this distribution strategy because they are trying to avoid a worst case scenario where they run out of money. The median return from this strategy is that their portfolio grows substantially. This growth of their portfolios is causing a concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich.
Now anywhere that is a good place to park money is shooting up in value. This includes stocks, real estate, gold and crypto.
My model predicts that everything investible will go up in value much faster than inflation.
The passive investment argument doesn’t explain why crypto and real estate are increasing in value. Most passive investors are holding stock and bond indexes.
Neither model can explain why bonds have crashed in value. Both models predict that bonds should be rocketing up like everything else.
At least one popular passive investment guide, _A Random Walk Through Wall Street,_ explicitly recommends investing in a real estate fund. Or at least it did last time I looked.
A comparison of XLRE or USRT to SPY across 5 years makes that seem like a terrible idea.
Real estate is partially explained by what you wrote. Wealth concentration passive investment. California is (19%) passive investment real estate, Hawaii (40%), Alaska (35%), Vermont (31%), West Virginia (30%), and Wyoming (30%). It's just wealthy people passive.
Bond's don't go up fast enough to keep up with the S&P, and especially the top 7. Buying a few percent of every S&P is better than buying bonds. 1Y is 19.8%. Bonds are 4.2% (Hitchhiker joke). 5Y is ~13.5% Until 2022 bonds were less than 2%.
They also look flat when you look at a line chart. Doesn't matter if the flat line means you make 4% a year. It looks flat.
Also, personal view. The concentration of wealth is only part of it. Humans in most cases aren't really involved. It doesn't actually have that much to do with "human" fundamentals. It has to do with algorithms calculating. Even a lot of hedge funds and banks just push a button, turn on a trading algo and walk away to go have a beer. The numbers are too large, and far away to actually mean much. Line twiddling about $200T in stocks does not actually mean much to normal humans. It's kind of that Russ Hanneman joke if you've ever seen Silicon Valley. "No. Billion not Million. B not an M. It's a 1000 of those."
The stock market situation's a bit like those auto-battlers that have taken over a lot of video gaming. "You want to actually play?" "No." "The game's going to play itself and you're not allowed to participate."
What if we just banned passive investing? Surely it's bad for the economy to funnel all the money toward the biggest firms rather than the most competitive. If they're performing badly then their stock should crash.
If a firm does badly, their market cap and weight in the ETF shrinks so it should be self-regulating.
https://blackrockvanguardwatch.com/
"the Big Three do exert the voting rights attached to these shares. Therefore, they have to be perceived as de facto owners by corporate executives. These companies have, in fact, publicly declared that they seek to exert influence. William McNabb, chairman and CEO of Vanguard, said in 2015 that, 'In the past, some have mistakenly assumed that our predominantly passive management style suggests a passive attitude with respect to corporate governance. Nothing could be further from the truth.' When we analysed the voting behaviour of the Big Three, we found that they coordinate it through centralised corporate governance departments. Hence, just three companies wield an enormous potential power over corporate America." (source, also this). In effect Vanguard and Blackrock forgo taking large fees in exchange for having enormous ability to exert power over the economy through influence on corporate boards and leadership. This power that is subject to little public awareness or accountability. This page gives a quick visual overview of it.
Larry Fink: "The behavior is going to have to change… this is something we’re asking companies. You have to force behavior. At BlackRock, we are forcing behaviors.”
https://theconversation.com/these-three-firms-own-corporate-...
In a recently published paper, our CORPNET research project comprehensively mapped the ownership of the Big Three. We found that the Big Three, taken together, have become the largest shareholder in 40% of all publicly listed firms in the United States.