We manage other people’s money so it is only fair that we are compared to something. The Russell Index mafia is that something and calling it a mafia is not out of line if you are on the receiving end of their licensing bill!

Our quick missive is the realization that more than 20% of the companies joining the Russell 3000 this month will have gone public through a Spac issuance per a note from I-Bank Jefferies. This includes a who’s who of conceptual zeroes including Canoo, Lordstown Motors, and Nikola.

Indexing assets makes sense in many cases for large sums of money investing in large companies. I would argue that it is difficult to stomach a process that admits newly minted companies having gone public via a nearly unvetted process and the investment world blindly accepts this “expert opinion” and dumps other people’s money into it. That is arguably a more important issue than our quietly snarky glee that our “competition” will own this.