How the Public Learned to Buy the Index Averages and Save Trillions of Dollars

Real Vision Essential ·
Featuring Robin Wigglesworth and Alfonso Peccatiello

Published on: January 27th, 2022 • Duration: 44 minutes

The index fund is probably the best innovation for individual investors in financial history. Robin Wigglesworth, a Financial Times correspondent and the author of “Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund,” compares index funds – one of the first products enabled by “big data” and computer modeling – to other disruptive technologies. In an interview with Real Vision’s Alfonso Peccatiello, author of financial newsletter The Macro Compass, Wigglesworth notes that because of their exponential growth index funds do pose some risk to to markets but that they’re “95% good” and “have saved investors trillions of dollars.” Tune in for a lively discussion between Wigglesworth and Peccatiello about the present and future of index funds, the role of asset managers, proxy investing, and the best measure of performance for individual investors. Recorded January 20, 2022.