The problem with these kind of charts is the implicit message that history is the future. America have been on the dominant financial and militaristic force in the world for the last century and its equities have reflected that strength.
Would it continue to be the same for the next century? Who knows! Ray Dalio and the Maxis think otherwise. Good work OP though!
Not according to Vanguard[0] (the link is for VFIAX but that's just the admiral fund), the quote I gave was from Vanguard's own description of the fund's composition.
You can take it up with Vanguard why they describe the fund as I've quoted[1].
Vanguard notoriously calls mid-caps "small," e.g., VB. Anyway, they're not the ones who select S&P500 index components. I love Vanguard, but this is one case where they're kind of off-base.
Vanguard tracks the index. The index are US large caps. In this case OP is right and vanguard is wrong. You should do a little research before you display such ignorance.
Like, find a company in the S&P 500[0] that is not an American company? A company named, oh I dunno, Linde plc, which trades as $LIN and was founded in Germany[1] and currently has its headquarters in the UK?
So on the technical merits, what I said was correct, the S&P 500 does indeed have non-US stocks. Further, on the general thrust of my point, that the S&P 500 has exposure to international markets, that also holds true, something like 71% US and 29% international based on some cursory research [2].
But please, continue to lecture me on my ignorance. :)
Who said anything about blind or tradition? That seems like stuff you injected into this convo, not me.
I trust institutions who have a strong track record of predictiveness and desirable outcomes. Vanguard has both in spades, and has earned their authority. If they stop accurately predicting future behavior and/or stop producing desirable outcomes, that will change their authority on matters of investing.
Not trusting predictiveness and desirable outcomes seems prone to bias. If your alternative is that you only trust yourself, that seems like both a paranoid and privileged outlook, given how much time and how many resources you'd need to expend to gain even half of the knowledge Vanguard as an institution has about operating as an investment advisor.
S&P publish a mid-cap index: the S&P400. It doesn't overlap the S&P500[1]. You have to have a generous definition of mid-cap to describe even the smallest S&P500 component as mid-cap. The 500th component has a market cap of ~$6B.
Regardless, they're all US stocks; the comment I was responding to claimed they were not.
First the S&P 500 captures 80% of the entire US market, 80%! [0]
Second, 6B is well within the middle of the Mid-cap range for at least one common definition: "Mid-cap (or mid-capitalization) is the term that is used to designate companies with a market cap (capitalization)—or market value—between $2 and $10 billion. " [1]
Now some people might define mid-cap differently(and S&P tries to), but that doesn't change the math. If 80% of the US market is the S&P 500, then by definition some mid-cap has to be in there, or one has a very distorted view of what the middle means.
US public companies are giant these days. Of course there are mid-cap only indexes(and funds), that has nothing to do with the S&P 500 though.
As for all US stocks, it definitely depends on how one defines a US stock. S&P obviously has their definition, and it may or may not agree with your personal definition, but I generally agree that the S&P 500 is basically US companies.
Would it continue to be the same for the next century? Who knows! Ray Dalio and the Maxis think otherwise. Good work OP though!