Most of the World’s Companies Are Duds, Stock Picker Says
- Almost all of them underperform one-month U.S. Treasury bills
- Wealth creation among U.S. stocks concentrated to a few names
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Two years ago, an Arizona State University professor made waves with a study showing all the wealth created by U.S. stocks is the result of gains in a weirdly small group of companies. Now he’s back with an update that shows the situation is no cheerier in the rest of the world.
Hendrik Bessembinder, a 62-year-old researcher in financial market design, and his team sifted through about 62,000 stocks traded in more than 40 countries between 1990 and 2018. Their finding: about 60% were such duds they did worse than one-month U.S. Treasury notes. The proportion was even greater than in the initial study, which focused on the U.S.