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Re:Five Biggest Stocks Are 23% of S&P 500 Market Cap by throw0101a on Monday November 30, 2020 @10:30AM (#25254754)
> The only thing an index fund (I'll assume SPY for sake of argument) gets you is diversity in number of holdings

"only thing"? "only"? That's huge:

> Famed economist and Nobel Prize winner Harry Markowitz called diversification “the only free lunch in finance.” The thought is that by diversifying, an investor gets the benefit of reduced risk while sacrificing little in expected returns over the long run.

* https://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2018/10/03/invest...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markowitz

What's the alternative anyway? Throwing darts at listing of stocks? Asking Orlando the cat?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_(cat)

Re:Five Biggest Stocks Are 23% of S&P 500 Market Cap by beezle on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @10:21AM (#25265905)
You are missing the point. The S&P 500 and most large mutual funds are not anywhere near as diversified as typical investors believe them to be and have become less so over the past few years. Investors buy them for the perception of great diversification as well as the ease of purchase/sale.

Diversity in number of holdings works well if the holdings are not heavily overweight/underweight and are not highly correlated. So RSP (equal weight S&P) would meet the definition of well diversified in respect to weighting. Unfortunately, equities have been trending towards an increasing degree of correlation which can't be adjusted for when an etf is constructed mechanically based on market cap.

I always urge friends, family etc. to look at the components of the various funds and etfs they hold as they will be shocked to find that, in aggregate, a significant portion of their position is in 10 or 15 stocks. For some that may be acceptable, especially if they hold other non highly correlated asset classes. For others, they need to take a little more time or consult a professional to research how to better balance that risk. As just one example, VXF attempts to capture the return of the non-S&P 500 equities.