The thesis here is that in the past short sellers would short sell overvalued stocks in the index and buy undervalued stocks and drive price discovery and that those mechanisms are broken due to:
- Passive index funds dominate the market and swamp the ability of active traders to drive price discovery
- Massive returns of these funds over the last 15 years have made beating the benchmarks difficult and leading investors away from actively managed portfolios
- The rise of meme stocks, options trading and crypto bro traders driving out hedge funds and institutional short sellers - Stock tickers and crypto being seen as disconnecting from the US Treasury’s as an anchor for risk free returns to a “Snow Crash” model where assets represent a stake in a new world order.