Everything is run by indexes, computers, and hedge funds. Compare with the 1980s - they just don't exist anymore.
1980s was mutual funds and small investors and CNBC and shoe leather. Managers actually visited companies to research potential investments. This was the era of Peter Lynch and John Neff, who ran two of the most successful funds of the era. Early hostile takeover artists exploit valuations to gain control and plunder assets and ditch labor to move overseas.
1990s - computer cowboys and tech investments and investing.
2000s - reexamination of technical analysis, which became widely accepted if lacking in long term insights.
2010s - high speed internet brought it home to most day traders. But it became a momentum game with QE1-2-3 and business media and hedge funds and the rise of educational gurus. Too big to fail banks support investment managers following collapses AIG, Lehman.
Today - algorithm trading, quant analysis, indexing, ETFs, hedge funds. News drives hedge fund hot lists which drives order flow and the trend. More important now is sector analysis which invests in a myriad of ETFs. Global news drives the dialogue, markets are manipulated by business, takeover artists, governments decrees.
Tomorrow - yes, could be this week! Fed action drives and owns the world. Stocks, bonds, ETFs. Hedge Funds and the Fed must account for 50% of trading, and they own much of it. Too big to fail? No failure to small to notice because even the tiniest failure gets magnified coverage and is a potential threat to the system that buys everything. Government, banks, investments, central banks - they are all merging. This is not a fascist government, this is a global, one-world, fascist economy.
There is no set and forget, which is what Trump is after. I doubt that rule will survive 2021. Invest and hedge is the way to self-preservation. Indexes are a delusion, read up on Robert Kiyosaki, "Conspiracy of the Rich".
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