The entire gain in the US stock market since 1926 was attributable to the best performing 3% of the listed companies. Arizona State University professor Hendrik “Hank” Bessembinder wrote a paper titled “Do stocks outperform treasury bills?” in 2017 and made this discovery. Hank’s paper was the first to provide an academic basis for the long-established investor practice of “running your winners”. That is to leverage the power of asymmetry in investing: The gains from successful investments can over time far outweigh the losses from failures. Investment firm Baillie Gifford commissioned research in 2019 titled “Do Global Stocks Outperform US Treasury Bills?” and found that only 1.3% of stocks contributed all of the net gains compared to the performance of treasury bills. Basically, a very, very small number of performers drive stock market returns. Baillie Gifford arranged the research in a very nice spread over here but I would like to highlight some important points....