Articles

For its first 19 years, a regular person could not buy the S&P 500. That wasn't an oversight. It was never meant to be bought.

When it launched in 1957, computers had just gotten good enough to track 500 stocks in near real time. The Dow only followed 30. The S&P 500 covered about 90% of US market value. It was built to measure the market, not to be a portfolio.

Then in 1976, Jack Bogle launched the first [[index fund]] ordinary investors could buy. He wanted to raise $150 million. He raised $11 million. Wall Street called it Bogle's Folly. That fund turned 50 in August 2026.

As of early 2026, more than $40 of every $100 put into an S&P 500 fund goes to just 10 companies. Those 10 carry 41% of the index but produce about 32% of its earnings.

For most people it's still the best thing to own. Not because the weighting is clever, but because costs [[compounding|compound]] against you and almost nobody beats the market after fees.

Owning the best available option and understanding what you own are two different things.

Concentration figures: Tyler Frawley, CFA, "The 'Great Narrowing': S&P 500 concentration," RBC Wealth Management, January 22, 2026.
rbcwealthmanagement.com/en-us/insights/the-great-narrowing-sp-500-concentration

On costs: William F. Sharpe, "The Arithmetic of Active Management," Financial Analysts Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1 (1991), pp. 7–9.

Canada's first old age pension came with a catch. If you died, the government could take it all back out of your estate. With 5% interest.

In 1927, the Old Age Pensions Act paid a maximum of $240 a year to Canadians aged 70 and up. To qualify, your income had to be under $365 a year, and the pension shrank as your income climbed past $125.

Then the law let the government recover every dollar it had paid you, plus interest, from whatever you left behind.

There was one limit. If part of your estate went to another pensioner, or to someone who had helped support you, the government left that part alone. It came after the heirs who hadn't.

We still say "clawback" when we talk about OAS today. Now it means your monthly payment gets reduced while you're alive, if you earn too much. Back then it meant a debt with interest that outlived you.

Same word. Very different deal.

Source: Old Age Pensions Act, R.S.C. 1927, c. 156, s. 9, as summarized in Statistics Canada, Canada Year Book 1929, "Labour and Wages," p. 750.
statcan.gc.ca/eng/1929 (Year Book 1929, p. 750)