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Re:Are Index Funds Eating the World? by tcoppi on Friday August 26, 2016 @05:43PM (#12369517)
I highly recommend most people, at least when they are young, don't put all their eggs into market cap weighted total market funds by getting at least some direct exposure to mid and small-caps. You can potentially leave a lot of growth on the table by being too heavily weighted towards the more conservative big boys(and conversely, lose a lot by not being so weighted towards them, but that's why you do it when you are young).
Re:Are Index Funds Eating the World? by loeg on Friday August 26, 2016 @06:27PM (#12369739)
Not really? Go to http://quotes.morningstar.com/chart/fund/chart?t=VITSX&regio... and click on "Maximum" and compare to VFINX. The total market and S&P500 indices have tracked really closely for a long time. You're not missing out on much, if anything, by holding only the S&P500.
Re:Are Index Funds Eating the World? by mortehu on Saturday August 27, 2016 @10:53AM (#12372584)
tcoppi is arguing against market cap weighting, which is the reason why VITSX is so close to VFINX despite containing other stocks.

If the total market is outperforming S&P 500, that means the companies not in S&P 500 perform better overall, so giving them greater weight than suggested by their relative market cap would have been beneficial.

Re:Are Index Funds Eating the World? by loeg on Saturday August 27, 2016 @12:49PM (#12373115)
Total market has outperformed slightly since 2008, but for a good period prior to that, the S&P500 was outperforming total market (also slightly). It's not super cut and dried.