Trillions: How a Band of Renegades Invented the Index Fund Part Two
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger
Audacy
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 17 October 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fifty years ago, the Manhattan Project of money management was quietly assembled in the financial industry's backwaters, unified by the heretical idea that even many of the world's finest investors couldn't beat the market in the long run.
The motley crew of nerds, including economist wunderkind Gene Fama, humiliated industry executive Jack Bogle, bull-headed and computer-obsessive John McQuown, and avuncular former WWII submariner Nate Most, succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Passive investing now accounts for more than $20 trillion, equal to the entire gross domestic product of the US, and is today a force reshaping markets, finance and even capitalism itself in myriad subtle but pivotal ways.
Yet even some fans of index funds and ETFs are growing perturbed that their swelling heft is destabilizing markets, wrecking the investment industry and leading to an unwelcome concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands.
In Trillions, Financial Times journalist Robin Wigglesworth unveils the vivid secret history of an invention Wall Street wishes was never created, bringing to life the characters behind its birth, growth, and evolution into a world-conquering phenomenon.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Jill on Money podcast. |
| 0:05.8 | It is Sunday, October 17th. |
| 0:08.9 | And today we are airing part two of our interview with Robin Wigglesworth. |
| 0:13.2 | Yep. |
| 0:14.2 | Straight from bed style to Oslo, probably the only person who could actually say that, right? |
| 0:18.7 | I'm just trying to think, who else lives in Oslo right now? |
| 0:21.8 | Who used to live in bed style in Brooklyn? |
| 0:24.8 | Come on. |
| 0:25.8 | I think that's a, that would be a big reach. |
| 0:27.8 | Anyway. |
| 0:28.8 | Robin Wigglesworth, the global finance correspondent of the Financial Times has written a book called |
| 0:33.6 | Trillians, How a Band of Wall Street Renegades invented the index fund and changed finance |
| 0:40.6 | forever. |
| 0:41.6 | And we're going to start this part, the second part of the interview, talking about Jack |
| 0:45.2 | Bogle, who is always called like the godfather of index funds. |
| 0:49.4 | And you know, he's like sort of the ultimate disruptor. |
| 0:51.6 | I, I thought the one, one real interesting thing that Robin said that, you know, I found |
| 0:55.9 | this so often in talking to a lot of people who get involved in certain aspects. |
| 1:01.3 | Maybe it's, uh, maybe it's financial technology or maybe it is someone like Charles Schwab, |
| 1:06.9 | who we've had on the program. |
| 1:08.2 | You often find that these people are, are remote, you know, they, they, they're not wall street |
| 1:13.5 | insiders. |
... |
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