More Money Podcast - 306 The Real History of Index Funds & Passive Investing - Robin Wigglesworth, Author and Journalist for The Financial Times

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

In today’s episode, we’re being treated to a history lesson on index funds from my guest who wrote the book all about it. Robin Wigglesworth’s new book, Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever, gives a broader history of index investing and how that has influenced the current markets.  Robin Wigglesworth is an author and the global finance correspondent at the Financial Times since 2008. He focuses on the biggest trends reshaping markets, investing, and finance across the world by sharing long-form features, profiles, and columns. Robin’s new book is a fascinating look at the financial history of index funds and why it was the invention that Wall Street initially never wanted.  In this episode, Robin shares how he fell into financial journalism and how his work allows him to be paid to learn. I was excited to talk to Robin because I thoroughly enjoyed his book, which is now going on my list as one of my favourite investing books, especially if you're a die-hard index investor like myself. For full episode show notes visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/306 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse, and this is episode 306 of the show. And it's December. My gosh, this is the last month for this season of the show that I'm going to take a little bit of a break, basically after Christmas and for the first few weeks of January, because guess what I will be doing as I've kind of shared recently on the podcast, I'll be moving into my new house. As I record this intro for this podcast episode, I am moved out of the townhouse, given the keys to the new owners, it is no longer mine. I do not have it. It's kind of weird. It is so weird to think that I lived there and I called it home for five years. No, now it's not my home. It is not weird to think that I lived there and I called it home for five years.

No, now it's not my home. It is not my home anymore. It is someone else's home. So crazy. So, you know, because I sold my house first and then bought second, we have a bit of a weird limbo situation. So I am living in an Airbnb for a few weeks, then me and my husband are off to Vancouver for the holidays, and going to stay there for a few more weeks. And then literally the day that we come back to Toronto, that is when we get our keys and we move in and there's going to be a whole lot to do. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so exciting times. But I'm actually really, really excited about even just being in this Airbnb being someplace new, and also fully furnished. And man, they, you know, have a much better, you know, aesthetic than I do. I am terrible when it comes to interior

design. I really don't know what the heck I'm doing. Not, not talented in that respect. So, and also, you know, big bonus, there's no noisy neighbors above us, no banging, just silence. I mean, silence sort of, I mean, we're in a pretty busy part of town. So there's a lot of street traffic, but it's actually kind of calming. Like, honestly, I will take cars driving back and forth all day compared to, you know, loud banging over top of our heads at night and early in the morning. So there we are. Any mahoo, enough about me. Just thought I'd give you a little update. I'm so excited. Honestly, I'm so, so excited to share this interview with you.

I have the amazing and super smart Robin Wigglesworth on the show. He is the author of, honestly, one of my top books that I've read this year. It's called Trillions, How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever. So you could probably guess why I like this book. It is like a 300-pager book on the history, the real full history of the invention of the index fund. And it's like, I've been doing this and talking about index investing and index funds for so long. I thought, what else could I possibly know? I've done a ton of research. I've read so many books about it. This really goes in deep. So if you are a history buff, but also are fascinated about index investing, or just investing in general, and really getting an insight into that

world of the financial industry, because honestly, I've never worked in the traditional financial industry. So I don't know what's really going on, all the rules and how these products, these investment products and new investment products specifically get invented. And they go into ETFs and index mutual funds and all that kind of stuff. He really goes, he does his research. Obviously, he knows what he's doing. And it's a fabulous book. So I can't say enough good things about this book. And honestly, I've read a lot of books. And you would think that like, you know, a historical kind of retelling of like the invention of the index fund wouldn't be super

exciting. I honestly whipped through it. I really, really liked it. So anyways, so Robin Wigglesworth is the global finance correspondent at the Financial Times. Hence why he was able to dig so deep and do some amazing research for his book. So as a global finance correspondent at the Financial Times. Hence why he was able to dig so deep and do some amazing research for his book. So as a global finance correspondent, he focuses on the biggest trends, reshaping markets, investing and finance more broadly across the world, and writing longer form features, analyses, profiles, and columns. And before joining the Financial Times in 2008, he actually worked at Bloomberg News. So yeah, we're going to get into it. I know you're going to absolutely love, love, love, love

this episode. Also, make sure to stick around to the end because I will be giving away a copy of his book. So make sure to stick around to the end, find out how you can enter to win any of these books because you have a pretty good chance of winning. Anyways, before I get to that interview with Robin, I just want to share a few words about this podcast episode's sponsor. This episode of the More Money Podcast is supported by Motley Fool Canada. You know that I'm a diehard index investor, but what you may not know is I've got a little satellite portfolio on the side for some individual stock investing. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a passive investor practicing a long termterm buy and hold strategy with these stocks, but this has been something I've been doing for a few years now. And one of the resources I use to help with research and stock recommendations is

Motley Fool's Stock Advisor Canada membership. Now, what drew me to Motley Fool Canada was that they share my same investment philosophy. They aren't about day trading or getting rich quick. They encourage buy and hold stock investing, making sure members are diversified, understand risk tolerance, and they even recommend investing in index funds. And most importantly, they want to educate Canadians about building wealth just like I do. So if you're interested in learning more about stock investing specifically, consider joining over 70,000 of your fellow Canadian investors today by signing up to Stock Advisor Canada. And if you visit fool.ca slash Jessica, you can save 66% off your membership. Once again, to sign up and get 66% off, visit fool.ca slash Jessica.

Welcome, Robin, to the More Money Podcast. So excited to have you on the show. Hi, Jessica. Thanks so much for having me on. Been looking forward to this. Oh, good. Me too. I'll be honest, I was surprised how much I really liked your book. Not to say, it's just like the topic, I'm like, this could be easily a very dry book. Luckily, it was not. Maybe it's also because I'm a nerd and I really enjoy learning the history of some of the things that I've learned in textbooks over these years. So I really, really enjoyed it. No, I think that's my sweet spot.

Essentially trying to, you know, geeky people that like history and maybe like to be told an important story and then actually interesting thing. Yeah. In a way, fashion, because let's face it, there are lots of important things that are actually kind of boring. Yeah. So it's fun when it's a little bit more fun as well I completely agree so so first I want to you know kind of start getting to know you a little bit more um so I know you are a global finance correspondent at the Financial Times sounds like you obviously very much like your job and what you do what you like to talk talk about. Can you kind of share, like, how did you get into this world of writing about finance?

Completely at random. I mean, I studied journalism, but I studied journalism and international relations and history and dreamt of being a war correspondent. Like many people, you know, studying through the late 90s, mid-noughties. But when I i graduated finance was where the jobs were you know financial journalism also used almost as an adjunct was taking off and i never wanted to work in finance but i thought finance journalism sounded kind of interesting i always liked figuring things out and learning new things and because i knew so little it actually seemed really interesting um and i've ended up you know i was briefly a war correspondent for the financial times i covered the arab spring and got to go to bahrain and benghazi uh in the middle of their civil wars but the first cut was the deepest and financial

journalism and economics journalism is where i've stayed and probably will stay for the rest of my life now oh wow, wow. Gosh. Do you have, like, before you, did you do any courses or anything like that in university? Like, or were you just totally fresh to it when you started? Completely fresh, especially to finance. I mean, because I'd studied history and international relations, I knew that economics was important. So I had basic, and I mean very basic, knowledge of some of the issues there. But finance I knew nothing about.

I remember my very first journalism, working for a banking magazine in Dubai. Literally the day after I landed, I had no clue what I was doing. And I was interviewing this local sheikh about Islamic reinsurance, which is as wildly exotic as it sounds. It's even worse than it sounds. But I just thought it was fascinating because I just thought, here I was, you know, fresh-faced grad, knew absolutely nothing,

and this guy is sharing liberally with his time and explaining stuff to me, and I'm learning. And I'm getting paid to do so. So that was quite exciting. It's one of the things that's fun with journalism and especially financial and economic journalism is that you talk to interesting people who share a lot of their time with you and you get paid to learn stuff. I mean, that's why I started the podcast. Yeah, like I completely agree. That's why I started a blog and a podcast. It's like a great opportunity to learn things that I didn't

know. And then eventually you become the expert, right? And now, you know, it's like you started from, I have no idea what I'm doing. You'll learn by just talking to people and doing your research. And now you're sharing all of this really amazing information with the masses and all of your pieces. And now your latest book. I want to kind of talk about the book. I'm curious. It's called Trillions. Why did I want to kind of talk about the book. I'm curious,

it's called Trillions. Why did you want to write this book? I mean, it is, again, a very specific topic in that basically the history of how did the index fund and index investing kind of come about? Why did you want to choose that topic? Well, so I was covering Wall Street for the Financial Times in New York. And, you know, I was leading a team of four then at the time. And, you know, then you can't cover everything. So you have to do a little bit of stocks go up, stocks go down. But it's sort of the most commoditized part of financial journalism. It's not the kind of stuff that gets you up from bed in the morning.

And you kind of sometimes lose the wood for the trees. So, you know, we focus very much at the FT covering the big, huge trends, the kind of stuff that's so big that sometimes you can kind of miss it in this of the everyday battle and drama of Wall Street. And one of the biggest trends was easily the rise of index funds, of passive investing, as it's often called, which is, you know, tiny when it started, but now it's like a multi-trillion dollar hydra that is slowly devouring more and more parts of the financial system.

And it was affecting everything. And I started digging into the history, because I'm a bit of a history buff as well. And, you know, sometimes, you know, the Genesis story isn't actually that interesting. But with index funds, it was amazing. It was fantastic. It was just populated with all these fascinating, flawed, brilliant geniuses, iconoclasts. And I just thought it was just a wonderful story and it was an important story and the combination of actually interesting people and something important to tell i thought that probably would make a good book i hope at least yeah i mean i

feel like a lot of people don't really i mean before i read your book i knew a lot of like the the characters involved and lots of the elements, but I actually didn't really, I'd never really thought to piece them all together. And it does give you that, I think, really important context to like, how did this all start? I think a lot of people just assume, oh, you know, something about Vanguard starting it all. And then people just kind of copied it.

And there we are. But there's so many people before Jack Boggle that started kind of putting all the foundations down. And it's interesting how they're all kind of connected. And yeah, like you said, it seemed like a lot of the players that had actually a big impact. Well, some of them, like you mentioned, were from like the, you know, I think it was the 1800s that got absolutely, you know, no respect. And it was only later after they died, then it was like, oh, this guy actually is a genius, which is, man, that must be so frustrating i mean he's dead he doesn't care but i'm like how frustrating is to dedicate

your life and no one respects you and then you died they're like wait a minute this guy may have had something yeah i mean that's why lewis beckelia as he's called is one of my favorite characters in the book even though he's one of the few people i never got to meet because i mean i i have a soft spot for people who die in obscurity you know these geniuses that toil away suffer setback after setback and are never given the respect and due they maybe were due in their own lives but then after they pass away they're just recognized as these towering giants of their field and Louis Bekele is one of those you know he basically nobody really knew him at all it was hard to find out a lot about his life because he was a nobody essentially but his PhD thesis called the theory of speculation was

you know one of the first mathematical treatments of the stock market and showed how stocks moved randomly and that's where you know a lot of academic thought sprung out of in the stock market and showed how stocks moved randomly. And that's where, you know, a lot of academic thought sprung out of in the 50s and 60s, long after he passed away in the United States, and the index fund eventually. So he's the granddaddy of the whole thing, really. And he is now today known as the father of financial economics. And you know, there are seminars and awards in his name. So after he passed away, he got the recognition he deserved. Absolutely. Yeah. Another thing I found really interesting reading the book, and again, this is because I think I'm pretty privileged in that,

you know, I'm a millennial. And so lots of this already existed by the time I discovered, oh, investing, what is that all about? But the fact that, yeah, looking back at history, you know, in the, you know, 1900s, there was just so much, there was a lack of transparency and information, but also of just, you know, research and like, no one was tracking any of these numbers. Like it kind of boggled my mind that I'm like, no one knew like past historical trends of like the markets, like no one knew they're like, I don't know, it know it's just fine like it just it kind of shocked me because now we're in this age of data data data and like you can't you know say something without having some sort of evidence to back it up but back in

the day all these investment you know advisors or professionals were just making money off people and getting their yachts and all that kind of stuff. And everyone was just like, yeah, it's probably fine. It's okay. It's okay. You'll be okay. I'm sure my broker or stockbroker is a very honest person who's definitely not lining his own pockets with my money. I know. It's wild. But I mean, I actually completely agree. And this is what blew me away a little bit as well. I mean, I'm a geriatric millennial,

so I can make me to remember the pre-internet days grew up with it but not my entire life same yeah yeah exactly so we kind of we we remember dial-up modems essentially but you know it's it's a distant memory but the the idea that this data wasn't there i mean not necessarily at their fingertips but just the concept that nobody knew what the u.s stock market's long-term returns were until the 60s blew me away. And then I realized how much work was involved in getting that data. And it's like, oh, yeah, I get it now. That sounds like a massive headache. And it costs a fortune to collect all the data from each individual magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Barron's Magazine,

and then collect them all together, clean up the data. This is also the very beginning of the computer era. So all respect to the people that did it, but I'm very glad that I can check this on Yahoo Finance these days. It's a bit easy for us. And I'd say it wasn't even easy like not just like the the lack of uh advanced technology that now we're lucky to have now but it was it seemed like anyone who wanted to kind of venture into that field and research

this stuff and be like hey we should have more information about this why are we not doing this uh everyone in the actual industry was is very skeptical and just thinking oh this is a waste of time and money we shouldn't even bother and i yeah i'm interested to know your thoughts like you know from researching all these different characters that just kind of push through like i mean it's almost like why would they why wouldn't they just give up because it seemed like you're just like trying to push a really big rock a mountain of a mountain no i mean that's what they were doing i mean it's one of the things i tried hard with the book is to you know the index fund is is the hero of the book it's the central protagonist and the people that invented it and helped it grow to what it is today but i really wanted to write something that was broad more broader about the history of investing essentially and how markets and investing have evolved and i think what surprises a lot of people today is just how

haphazard frankly it was for a very long time and you know we can kind of joke about you know sometimes you know individual day traders and the research they do or you know astrologer forecasters on tiktok you know that's kind of cutting edge compared to the stuff they used to do and i think that's the the fun part that seeing how an industry hates being disrupted right it's also a very broader far broader familiar story of story of industry is getting very rich on the status quo. And these kind of annoying outsiders are ruining everything by saying there's a cheaper, simpler way to do that. And obviously they get figuratively spat upon. So I think it's no coincidence that the people that first did the very first index funds that built on the academic theory all worked at, to be honest,

second, third tier financial institutions far away from New York or London, like the financial centres of the world. You know, they worked, it was like Wells Fargo in San Francisco, when Wells Fargo was a tiny regional bank that nobody really cared about. American National Bank, which I think was the third biggest bank in Chicago, but not a well-known bank. And like a place called Battery March, which was essentially just a tiny startup company in Boston run by this guy that, you know, flew planes as a hobby. So you needed some renegades to do this somebody who really didn't care at all about being hated by their own industry well it's interesting

too because it's like that sounds like oh well that was the past and that was before the index one it's like it still exists today though i i talk to you know individuals every single day who you know are just getting started with investing or are just starting to learn about investing. And their main thing is, you know, I talked to my advisor at my, you know, wealth management firm or bank or what have you. And they're still kind of bashing the index fund or will not talk about things that are low fees, most likely because, again, the status quo and they won't make their quotas. They won't make more money, all that kind of stuff. And it's 2021. This is still going on. No, it's crazy. But I have to admit, I mean, it's on one hand baffling, but on the other hand, it's very understandable because it's just human nature, right?

I mean, the most potent line of attack when index funds were starting in the 70s, it still is today, is like, who wants to be average? Nobody wants to be average nobody wants to be average right so yes everybody knows the data that obviously the average investor in an active fund does as well as the market on average and actually after the cost of the fund you're going to do less it's just a mathematical certainty so you know mathematically the average investor is better off in index funds but everybody thinks they can be above average it's like how guys think like what 80 90 percent of men think they're above average drivers i mean it's it's just ingrained in us and it's ingrained in us as humans just want to be better i mean even today i mean i go on to like reddit and some of the forums and you see

the discussions where like people will say index funds that's just boomer spam like is that right yeah i've seen it people boomer spam which i thought was that's brilliantly cutting right i mean because it really goes into you know frankly maybe my own insecurities but just humans right we want to be seen to be cool and interesting and going to a party and saying you'd invest in an index fund is not cool right it's not you want to say you invested in tesla or like some weird funky triple leverage biotech etf so you know the long-term data isn't cool it's the data it shows you what you should do but it doesn't help you so i don't think that's going to change that much you know people always as they say on reddit they want to get their drive their lambo now not when they're 60 uh if you tell them that you know if they're going to go yellowing options on tesla now they probably won't ever have a lambo uh you just get

kind of shunned out but sadly i don't know if that's ever going to change it just seems to be human nature which i'm actually okay with because as someone who is going to be a lifelong index investor, I'm kind of okay with not everyone jumping on the bandwagon. I mean, I think that this is another thing that I see often in forums and circles is also the potential downsides of indexing.

If it becomes too popular, if everyone invests in index funds, will that have some negative consequences for the economy or the markets? What are your kind of thoughts on that? Does that even make sense? No, it totally does. And it's one of the main themes I try to tackle in the last third of the book. book because I think even for massive index fund fans like me I think you'd be it'd be crazy to dismiss the idea that even beneficial new technologies and that's kind of what I think

the index fund was can have negative side effects you know you know everything we invent you know the mobile phone like a smartphone fantastic but am I wasting too much of my life staring at this stupid little screen? So with index funds, there are many aspects to it. Now, I don't think we will ever get to a point in time where everybody's indexed. I mean, if everybody was indexed, the markets, it wouldn't be a market, it would just collapse, it wouldn't function. But I just think there's always going to be enough people that that uh won't happen and frankly markets people have been worried about markets efficiency that they'll somehow work less well basically since the invention of index funds but in practice i kind of think of it as a poker game like if you invent invite 10 friends over and you play poker you'll chip in 100 bucks probably your four worst friends

are going to drop out first right they're going to lose all the money they're going to be bluffing badly and all that that doesn't mean the game gets easier it's harder with the six remaining friends and that's kind of what we see with markets. The fund managers that are losing their jobs gradually or basically retiring and thinking, actually, this is too hard, tend to be, I mean, I don't want to say they're bad, but they're not as good as the people that remain on average. Some people can get lucky and some people can get unlucky.

But broadly speaking, that's what you'd expect over time. But as more and more people drop out, more and more day traders get their faces ripped off by wall street professionals you know broadly speaking you'd expect people in the market get smarter and smarter in the market get more efficient and harder to beat and that's why we actually see traditional mutual funds their performance actually seems to be getting worse even as more and more money goes into index funds i think what there are some other issues that we should worry about like i do think there's

lots of really dumb index funds out there just because you call it an index fund an etf you know there's a lot of silly stuff you can do with that yeah well that's the thing there's i feel like the the original you know description of an was, you know, it's for a broad market index. But now I've been seeing a lot of because especially with ETFs becoming so much more popular, there's a lot of ETFs that are calling themselves an index ETF. However, what they're not really being as, I think, transparent about is, well, they're tracking a very niche index, not a broad market index. Do you want to kind of talk about that going on? Is it just a marketing thing? No, it's a huge problem. And we see it so many times. I mean, through human history. I mean, a classic case I always highlight is securitization. The idea of like taking mortgage debt debt for example

and slicing and dicing it up into bigger bonds. That's actually a really good invention. That's made borrowing costs cheaper for millions of Americans and people around the world. But if you do it dumbly then it blows up in your face and you get something like 2008. So with index funds as well like you say the original idea of an index fund was giving people a cheap, well-diversified access to the entire stock market or maybe even the entire bond market later on. But especially ETFs, you know, I love how you can use that in so many ways that I think people forget that the ETF, though it had its genesis as a passive index tracker, that's the first ETF, so that's where most of the money is still today. You can do all sorts of different things with it. You can put an active investment strategy in it. You can put derivatives-based investment strategies, commodities in it.

And I think Wall Street is bad at this. But, you know, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should and I think maybe there is a risk that some people are sold something thinking well it's an index fund so how bad can it be and then lo and behold realize they've bought a bundle of derivatives of derivatives of derivatives that blew up in their face. Most famously, an ETF called XIV that blew up in 2018 and actually caused a fairly significant stock market earthquake at the time. So I think that's definitely something to worry about. And people should be, you know, not just checking the tin, but maybe opening it up inside and seeing

what's in there as well before they buy it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I remember, you know, not just checking the tin, but maybe opening it up inside and seeing what's in there as well before they buy it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I remember, you know, years ago when I read Jack Bogle's, like the little book of common sense investing, he did, it was interesting because at the time, like index ETFs were becoming, you know, a lot more popular and he was like strongly against them. And his kind of argument was,

I can see how people will, and fund managers and these companies will manipulate them. And obviously he knew what he was talking about because that's exactly what's happened. Well, Mr. Bogle's, his criticism was like, he just hated ETFs. Just fundamentally, just the idea of them. He hated trading. Yeah, he didn't like the trading yeah because it sounded even if it's a passive you know tracking ETF it's if you're trading it's not passive yeah so he he was worried about people he wanted somebody to buy the Vanguard 500

fund and buy it and hold it until they pass the way basically right just forget about it don't do anything and the idea of trading in and out of the spider etf the s&p 500 etf that state street has you know at 9 13 10 15 11 o'clock 12 o'clock he just hated that idea because he knew that actually what a lot of investors do which is even worse than just buying an active because he knew that actually what a lot of investors do which is even worse than just buying an active expensive mutual fund is actually chasing hot fund managers and selling out at the worst times so their actual outcomes of investors is even worse but I think he later warmed a little bit to the idea that ETFs can still be a pretty good way of building an overall portfolio especially lots of financial advisors use them you can buy an ETF on a brokerage account

for free these days you know so I think he never grew to love them but I think he gradually grew to accept some parts of it before he passed away but very grudgingly to put it mildly yeah that's the sentiment i got and it's funny too because like you know i'm based in canada and so when i started learning about um index investing it is kind of a different industry here in that index mutual funds never actually got super popular but index etfs did we just kind of bypassed index mutual funds for their popularity compared to the us and And so when I read that, I'm like, wait a minute, in Canada, they're actually the thing to do instead of an index mutual fund. Because for an index mutual fund, you typically have to go through a bank and we all kind of want to avoid those big banks.

We can help it. Well, a little bit of financial history for you is that Canada had the very first ETF in history it was not the US yeah so you can go team Canada I know as a Canadian don't worry we will always point out whatever the heck Canadians invented we invented basketball apparently and a bunch of other things that people will always say no you didn't like yes we did and we'll hold on to that until the day we die well I I'm despite the weird last name i'm actually norwegian and norwegians are exactly the same cold country that desperately clings to any claim to fame yeah but i think both canadians and norwegians know that the winter olympics are the real olympics right i would agree i mean if you can do a sport in the cold i mean that's so much harder than in the summer in my

opinion but um i'm curious because i think you also have some sentiments um i read an article where um they kind of mentioned that they they emailed you about your book and they got an interesting auto response and i'm like oh this is funny um just about your thoughts on esg and crypto it's like if you're emailing me about this don't even bother expecting a response so i i kind of want to touch on that because again these are kind of the new i feel like the indexing index funds were kind of like, people were excited to talk about them and definitely the past decade. And I think, I think excitement for them, maybe because they are pretty simple and boring. It's starting to wane, people are looking for the new next thing. What are your kind of thoughts on what people are looking towards next?

No, I think it's exactly that but for very different reasons for crypto and esg i think my out of office was uh if you call me up about it you're going in my big book of grudges and i'll you know it's real and i take it very seriously oh no that's mostly the fact that you know as a journalist i get a lot of spam from from people in the industry but i get more emails about esg environment social and governance investing and crypto than anything else put together literally my inbox is 60 esg and crypto it feels like it waxes and wanes a little bit but it's bad um so for different reasons i i have issues with both things i mean esg i think it's not just that it's the hot thing i mean clearly we all kind of feel that you know it would be good

if our investments could actually help make the world a better place i mean i'm scandinavian you know you know i don't like guns i think we should take care of the environment, things like that. I'm just sceptical that investment groups are the right tool to do that. I think that's something that we as people and our elected politicians, and the countries that are fortunate to have elected politicians, need to do that. That is not something we should put pressure on pension plans and asset managers to do asset managers love it because frankly they can market themselves as being kind of nice and kind and we're helping the world good guys yeah exactly and you know cynically sometimes you can charge a bit more money if you have an est fund versus just a plain vanilla index fund, for example. So I'm skeptical that it will

help. I'm skeptical that they should be doing this that much. But I very much understand the motivations behind it. With crypto, look, I'm in these full disclosure, I am a skeptic, I am a hopeless no-coiner, never going to make it it salty critic um and i'm actually a bit of a technology nerd like i have never seen like a new cool weird technology with no obvious uses that i haven't instantly fallen in love with but crypto is kind of the exception maybe because i did grow up in norway we have a perfectly efficient cheap payment system i think it's mostly americans in some countries where they're kind of used to getting rinsed on transfers

and by their banks that they think that's the norm and crypto is the solution. No, it's not really. I mean, Europe, for example, they just regulated how much banks were able to charge and when they were able to charge and how quickly they can do it. This is not beyond the technological abilities of mankind to manage this without all the elaborate, I feel one was Rude Goldberg in

kind of work on top of that. So, you know, Bitcoin, people clearly think it's like the new digital gold. And, you know, you know, most of the people have bought in early and rich, and I'm definitely not. So maybe the market is the ultimate arbiter of this. I just still have yet to see any meaningful, useful application that actually is legit even after a decade of this. And there's a lot of hucksterisms and outright fraud and boosterism

in the entire ecosystem that makes me a little bit queasy and maybe makes me feel uneasy about the entire sector as a whole. Perhaps unreasonably so, but it's just, you know, when there's so much stinkiness out of it, I kind of judge the entire industry. Yeah, no, I agree. I totally agree. I mean, I think Bitcoin is, like, I'm a bit less, I mean, I'm a skeptic to I only own like $500 worth of Bitcoin. And that's how much I'm probably gonna own. And it's I don't and I don't like it. Like, it makes me feel like I never check how much it's worth, because I don't want to know because it makes me feel bad. But yeah, with all that, like you mentioned, like, there's so many I feel like what what was it? Like Dogecoin got, you know, it's, it's moment in the sun recently.

And we were just like, oh, we got it. I'm like, I'm sorry. Are we really talking about buying this digital currency with a dog cartoon? Like I, what's going on? I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense. But I am, I'm like the opposite to you. I am not an, like I like technology, but I am a late adopter to everything.

You know, like I will take years and years and years to get like the latest technology. Like for like, I remember when the Apple watch came out, I'm like, let's see if that lasts. And it's still around. So I'm just like the opposite. But that's, again, I think why I was so attracted to indexing. I'm like, it's simple. It makes sense. And then it's, you can just move on with your life.

I don't. And I think part of the other issue I have too with things like crypto and the latest ETF really is the community that's around. It's just a bunch of investing bros. I'm like, not my scene exactly. No, it's I mean, it's you know you see the gender gender balance but beyond that i feel the whole industry feels very much built around selling fear and greed yeah and it's the fear of staying poor there's a reason why i have fun staying poor is like the rallying call and hold and i just feel you know we've seen echoes of that many many times

through history and um i i could maybe ignore some of that stuff if i see any sort of fundamental applications but i've yet to see anything reasonable where like Visa's got a better, quicker, cheaper, more efficient payment system than Bitcoin still after 10 years of development. And we're always told that this eventually will become the world but it feels still the entire industry is built up around one single purpose and that is getting more money in from people around the world. Yeah, that's kind of a mlm or something like that doesn't it it sounds like something we've seen many times through history sadly in different incarnations and we always think these have to be some criminal enterprises it's mostly hope right

and sometimes that hope becomes true or it becomes true but you still lose money i mean imagine if you invested in dot-com stocks in 99, right? To a large extent, that future was realized. But depending on what you bought, you still would have absolutely got hammered within, well, certainly six months to a year. But even took a decade. Look at Cisco. People bought Cisco because they thought that would be the backbone of the internet economy they would be the physical infrastructure for a world wide world that's right

cisco makes massive amount of money way more than ever did in 99 but still trading at what half the price it did 20 years ago so you can be right and still lose money in investing and you can be wrong and still make money and that's i you can be wrong and still make money. And that's, I think, one of those things that, you know, always spooks me a little bit and why I'm maybe a natural indexing guy. Just owning everything, because I cannot predict what the heck is going to happen.

And I don't personally have the time or the inclination to do all of that research on individual stocks every single day. Not my thing. Yeah. No, I always say that investing, and this is a little bit glib, but investing is one of the few areas of life where it actually pays to be lazy. I mean, it's wonderful, right? You just buy something broad and cheap and diversified. And statistically, you're going to do way better than most people in the long run. Now, the hard part, being lazy is not enough. You need to be disciplined lazy. You have to stay lazy. And I think that's the hard part being lazy is not enough you need to be disciplined lazy

you have to stay lazy i think that's the hard part right because especially at times like now with day trading back in the vogue cryptocurrencies you know doubling overnight you know i can't i think it was paul samuelson or some famous economist that said nothing is more detrimental to your mental health than seeing your neighbor get filthy rich and i think that's what we all get caught up in occasionally um but we know how it ends but it could end tomorrow it could end you know in my children's lifetime so we'll wait and see yeah yeah we'll wait and see and maybe you'll have another book that'll be all about that which i'd be so interesting i would love to read a book in like 10 or 20 years or however many years. It'll take the history of all that and what lessons we should learn.

Because again, history tends to repeat itself. So I feel like we've all seen this happen before. Why are we so quick to forget everything? But yeah. Anyways, I really enjoyed your book for anyone really interested in and i think especially like someone like i about a year ago did there's a thing called the canadian securities course which is a extremely dry boring intense exam about investing that anyone has to uh take if they want to uh you know do a profession investing and

it was actually really nice to read your book because I'm like, oh my gosh, that's the guy who invented modern portfolio theory. I would, there was some context in that textbook instead of trying to memorize a thing that I didn't really know where it came from. So I really enjoyed it. And so if anyone is like a history buff and also wanting to know, like, how did these, how did these things come together to give you, I guess, more, for me, it for me it maybe maybe that's why i like it reaffirmed my belief that indexing is good so i appreciate that yeah i we all love you know things that we reaffirm our own pre-existing beliefs but i think you're right i think indexing is the right choice for people and i i do love yeah the stories behind the people behind modern

portfolio theory and cap em and all these kind of convoluted things because they're fascinating absolutely so uh before i let you go if anyone wants to i guess follow follow up with you or grab your book or find you on the internet where can they find you sadly probably around some 18 hours a day on twitter because i am a journalist so that makes sense that is where all the journalists live for sure i follow a lot of them but they're very entertaining apologies in advance for my stream which is a mix of really recondite financial stuff eurovision song contest and liverpool football club i love it but i definitely do feel questions

there i think it's just a great way of you know, too many journalists can get a little bit thin skin sometimes. I think it's actually good to actually talk to people, but also email me if you don't want to, sort of just ping me online, and yeah, please pick up the book, and if you have any questions or criticisms, then yeah, ping me. Say, holy cow, this is what you need to do for the sequel,

which I'm going to call Zillions, I think. I love that. I love that already. Just so just so people know what is your twitter is it just your name uh robin wig at robin wig you know robin wigglesworth just became way too too long also i've got to say i love your last name so much it is the best last name of anyone i've ever met i love it so when i got the pitch to have you on my show, I'm like anyone with that last name can happily be on my show. That sounds like it's amazing. See, this is it.

Like I grew up with the name Wigglesworth in Norway was not fun where everybody's called Hanson, Svensson and Johnson, but as a journalist, it's wonderful because you sound like a Harry Potter character. I like it. Yes. There's something in there.

Oh my gosh. That's funny. That's funny. Anyways. Thank you so much for being on the show. It's a pleasure having you. There's something in there. Oh, my gosh. Exactly. That's funny. Anyways, thank you so much for being on the show. It was a pleasure having you. No, thanks, Jessica. I really loved it. And that was episode 306 with Robin Wigglesworth.

You can find him a couple different places. He's on Twitter at Robin Wig. So that's R-O-B-I-N-W-I-G-G. You can also find him at FT.com slash robin dash Wigglesworth. That is where you can find more information about him and read some of his articles that he's written for the Financial Times. And, of course, make sure to grab a copy of his book, Trillions. You can find it, you know, Amazon and any other place that sells books. But, of course, make sure to just go to the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 306.

I will include links more about him, how you can, you know, find him on Twitter and buy his book and some of the articles he's written. So make sure to go to the show notes for this podcast episode at jessicamorehouse.com slash 306. And just a reminder, if you want to look at the show notes for any episode that I've had in the past, and yeah, obviously, there's a lot there's over 300. All you have to do is go to the Jessica Morehouse.com slash whatever the number of the episode is. So I have lots of important things to share with you. So stick around just have a few words I want to share about this podcast episode sponsor. This episode of the more money podcast is supported by Motley Fool Canada interested in leveling up your stock market knowledge and skills

want to dip your toes into investing in individual stocks by taking a methodical get-rich-slowly approach? Then consider signing up to Stock Advisor Canada. I've personally been a member for two years now, and I'll tell you why as a loud and proud index investor I signed up. Because they are all about playing the long game. You won't see them promoting hot stocks you can flip for a supposed quick profit. They are focused on educating Canadians about long-term stock investing and even recommend holding stocks for at least five years because, as we all know, patience is an investor's greatest asset. Not only does membership include buy and sell recommendations, weekly updates, special reports, and member forums, it also has their premium hub

with members-only live streams, exclusive videos, and more., it also has their premium hub with members-only live streams, exclusive videos, and more. So no matter if you want to start investing in stocks or just improve your overall investing knowledge, consider joining over 70,000 of your fellow Canadian investors today by signing up to Stock Advisor Canada. And if you visit fool.ca slash Jessica, you can save 66% off your membership. Once again, to sign up and get 66% off, visit fool.ca slash Jessica. Okay, first and foremost, important thing, like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I'm giving away a copy of Trillion. So if you and also every book that has been featured on this show, there's a few more authors. Actually, let me check. What do we have going on in the future?

I've got one more book to add. I might just add it right now. So all of the books from this season will be available for you to enter to win a copy. But if you just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contests, that is where you can find all the books I'm giving away. I probably have been doing a bad job of promoting it on the podcast because I've been busy, you know, selling my house, buying a new house, all that kind of stuff. And I'm just trying to I'm just I'm, you know,

you're just trying to keep my head above water, really. So again, JessicaMorehouse.com slash contest is where you can find all those books to enter to win. I will also, you know, if you always want a reminder to I do promote it in my bi weekly, sometimes lately monthly newsletter. If you just go to Jessica Morehouse.com slash subscribe, you can get onto my email list. And I always kind of share updates about what's going on new pieces of content that have created besides the podcast, you know, I've got a YouTube channel, I've got a blog, I've got social media, I do events and webinars and all these kinds of things. So make sure to get onto my email list, jessicamorehouse.com slash

subscribe is where you can find all of that stuff. I've got some really great episodes. Honestly, I'm going to just share with you right now for the rest of this season. Just to give you an idea, we've got one, two, three, four, I've got four more episodes coming at you. So that's like December 8th, 15th, 16th, 22nd. And you're not going to want to miss I'm very excited about finishing this season with a bang. I think it's a really good I'll be honest, I think this is a really freaking good season. I'm pretty proud of all the guests and all the amazing topics that we were able to explore. Another thing I actually want to update you since we are now in December, we've got one more month left in the

year. And I haven't really talked about it too, too, too much on the podcast. So my investing course, Wealth Building Blueprint for Canadians. So very excited. February, it'll be its one year anniversary. And honestly, it's been so inspiring to see all these students, especially the students who started right at the beginning when I first launched the course, see their progress throughout the year. And you know what, it's been a pretty good year to invest in the stock market and index funds. So, you know, people have been building some wealth, which was the intention of the course. Now with that, I do want to encourage you to apply, but you probably want to do that sooner rather than later, because I will be raising the price because I know the

price point that I've had that is, you know, much lower than it should be for all the amazing resources and content and, you know, just the access to me in the course. So you're definitely going to want to do that. If you want to learn more about what the course is about and apply, just go to JessicaMorehouse.com slash WBB. There is a link to show notes, you can always just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash WBB. There is a link to show notes, you can always just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash 306. But also I'm, you know, making some major updates to the course, you know, making it more comprehensive. It's just a good time to start the course. And I always kind of feel like, especially if you have a goal of like learning more about investing and starting investing, especially or, you know, moving out of, you know, your portfolio of expensive,

actively managed mutual funds, the bank and moving into some index funds. You know, there's never been a better time than the present. But also, especially I feel like before things get really crazy over the holidays, and even before the new year starts, I feel like setting a goal now is sometimes better than doing it in January, because there's so much pressure to, you know, set all the goals and do all the things and change your life completely every January. So if you start it now, then you've already got that momentum for January. So just think about it. Is there anything else I want to share about anything? Gosh, I think that might be it for the time being. So thank you so much for listening. I will be back here next Wednesday with a special episode about real estate. I'm very excited about it. And it was actually recorded before I bought my place. So I really was like asking this, you know, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening.

But otherwise, a big shout out to my podcast editor, Matt Rideout. And a last little reminder. Hey, I'm on Instagram. So if you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Jessica I. Morehouse. You can also find the podcast on Instagram as well at More Money Podcast. Okay, that's it for me. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you here next week. Have a great rest of your week.