Cap-Weighted Indexes Suck

…and yes, I know it’s “indices” but indexes sounds and reads better and it’s my site.  And I don’t use cap-weighted indexES for anything other than answering people’s questions about benchmark performance or short-term trades.

Bloomberg‘s Statistician-Reporter-Warrior-Poets were set loose on the whole “lost decade for stocks” meme and it turns out that a simple equal-weighted S&P 500 has actually risen by 66% over the last ten years versus the traditionally cap-weighted S&P 500 you know and love (which did nothing).

My man Rob Arnott from Research Affiliates has the money quote:

“It was only a lost decade if you anchored on equities as your core holding and you relied on cap-weighting,” Rob Arnott, chairman and founder of Newport Beach, California-based investment firm Research Affiliates LLC, said in a telephone interview on Nov. 18. About $78 billion is managed using his firm’s investment strategies. “It was a lost decade for most investors, but it didn’t have to be.”

Equal-weighted index products are part of the alternative index family, along with fundamentally-weighted indexes as well as the new “discipline” index ETF products (growth at a reasonable price ETF, large cap contrarian index ETF etc.).

Source:

No Lost Decade for Equal-Weight S&P 500 (Bloomberg)

Tags: $SPY