Ben Carlson

speaker

1,555 appearances 4 recordings 4 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 11 Jun

Ben Carlson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.

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Stock Club · #315: How to Invest Through Booms, Busts & Bubbles (w/ Ben Carlson) · 11 Jun 2026 podcast

I think the gross returns were really good in the past, but the net returns probably weren't quite as good because fees were so high.

I think the very first Vanguard index fund in 1976 had an 8.5% sales load, a front-end sales load.

You paid 8.5% of your money just to invest.

And that's on top of the investment expense.

That certainly is part of it.

I think the fact that so much is automated now, people with retirement accounts, technology allows you to automate your investments, and so much money just flows in automatically.

That stuff didn't happen in the past, with all the different retirement accounts and people being defaulted into investing.

I think that has impact on it, for sure.

Obviously, things like target date funds and index funds that indiscriminately buy

I do think that has an effect on valuations.

I think the other thing is just that companies are so much more efficient now than they were in the past.

I did this chart.

And you look at how high their margins for companies in the 70s and 80s were so paper thin because they were so much more capital intensive.

Which is kind of ironic that it seems like getting into the data centers, these big tech companies are becoming more capital intensive, which is interesting.

But the margins just seem to keep marching higher and higher.

And so if these companies are more efficient, to me it would make sense that valuations would be higher.

Which is, I think valuations, it's turned into one of the hardest things to play.

Because it feels like you're...

it's a moving target, right?

The historical valuations, like what should we compare it to the last 10 years, the last 20 years, the last hundred years?

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