Hidden Forces

In Episode 216 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Robin Wigglesworth, the Financial Times global finance correspondent and author of “Trillions,” a book which chronicles the origins, history, and future of the index fund, arguably the most disruptive financial innovation of the last 50 years. Robin and Demetri spend the first half of their conversation exploring the history of passive investing and its evolution into what some argue has become a market-distorting phenomenon that is making markets less efficient by inhibiting price discovery and concentrating power in the hands of an increasingly smaller number of index fund managers and purveyors of indices. In the overtime, the two switch gears to discuss some of the timelier stories concerning investors, including inflation, whether or not it is transitory, and what central banks are able and prepared to do in order to curb it. Robin and Demetri also discuss the ongoing trading scandals at the Federal Reserve and what they say about the extent of