Wigglesworth Quotes

Great faith is the product of great fights. Great testimonies are the outcome of great tests. Great triumphs can only come out of great trials.

In me is working a power stronger than every other power. The life that is in me is a thousand times bigger than I am outside.

The secret of spiritual success is a hunger that persists…It is an awful condition to be satisfied with one’s spiritual attainments…God was and is looking for hungry, thirsty people.

It is better to live ready than to get ready!

There is nothing impossible with God. All the impossibility is with us when we measure God by the limitations of our unbelief.

God has privileged us in Christ Jesus to live above the ordinary human plane of life. Those who want to be ordinary and live on a lower plane can do so, but as for me, I will not.

The Lord would so cleanse the motive and desires of our hearts that we will seek but one thing only, and that is, His glory.

There is nothing that our God cannot do. He will do everything if you will dare to believe.

The Spirit reveals, unfolds, takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us, and prepares us to be more than a match for Satanic forces.

The blood of Jesus Christ and His mighty name are an antidote to all the subtle seeds of unbelief that Satan would sow in your minds.

God wants to purify our minds until we can bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. God dwells in you, but you cannot have this divine power until you live and walk in the Holy Ghost, until the power of the new life is greater than the old life.

Wherever the Holy Ghost has right of way, the gifts of the Spirit will be in manifestation; and where these gifts are never in manifestation, I question whether He is present.

The Bible is the Word of God: supernatural in origin, eternal in duration, inexpressible in valor, infinite in scope, regenerative in power, infallible in authority, universal in interest, personal in application, inspired in totality. Read it through, write it down, pray it in, work it out, and then pass it on. Truly it is the Word of God. It brings into man the personality of God; it changes the man until he becomes the epistle of God. It transforms his mind, changes his character, takes him on from grace to grace, and gives him an inheritance in the Spirit. God comes in, dwells in, walks in, talks through, and sups with him.

Those who carry the vessels of the Lord must be clean, must be holy (Isa. 52:11).

It pays to trust God with all and to make no reservation.

I am not moved by what I see. I am moved only by what I believe. I know this-no man looks at appearances if he believes. No man considers how he feels if he believes. The man who believes God has it.

These times of waiting on God for the fullness of the Spirit are times when He searches the heart and tests the mind (Jer. 17:10).

I will tell you, for I never saw a man get anything from God who prayed on the earth. If you get anything from God, you will have to pray into heaven; for it is all there. If you are living in the earth realm and expect things from heaven, they will never come. And as I saw, in the presence of God, the limitations of my faith,

Smith Wigglesworth exhorted, “Read it through; write it down; pray it in; work it out; pass it on. The Word of God changes a man until he becomes an Epistle of God.

When the Word and Spirit come together, there will be the biggest movement of the Holy Spirit that the nation, and indeed the world, has ever seen.1 —SMITH WIGGLESWORTH (1859–1947)

Real faith built the ark, but real faith did not shut the door. God did that. He does what you cannot do.

wrought. Jesus saw every touch by God as a miracle,

One half of the trouble in the assemblies is the people’s murmuring over the conditions they are in. The Bible teaches us not to murmur. If you reach that standard, you will never murmur anymore. You will be above murmuring. You will be in the place where God is absolutely the exchanger of thought, the exchanger of actions, and the exchanger of your inward purity. He will be purifying you all the time and lifting you higher, and you will know you are not of this world (John 15:19).

I believe that there is only one way to all the treasures of God, and that is the way of faith. By faith and faith alone do we enter into a knowledge of the attributes and become partakers of the beatitudes, and participate in the glories of our ascended Lord. All His promises are Yea and Amen to them that believe.

Real faith has perfect peace and joy and a shout at any time. It always sees the victory.

The Holy Spirit is coming to take out of the world a church that is a perfect bride. He must find in us perfect yieldedness, with every desire subjected to Him.

There is no such thing as the Lord not meeting your need. There are no “if’s” or “mar’s” ; His promises are all “shah’s.” All things are possible to him that believeth. Oh, the name of Jesus! There is power in that name to meet every condition of human need.

Divine life is full of divine appointment and equipping, and you cannot be filled with the power of God without a manifestation. It is my prayer that we would understand that to be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be filled with manifestation, the glory of the Lord being in the midst of us, manifesting His divine power.

Thought for today: When the Holy Spirit comes into your body, He comes to unveil the King, to assure you of His presence.

Thought for today: We are saved, called with a holy calling-called to be saints, holy, pure, Godlike, sons with power.

crumbs.” Jesus was stirred as He saw the faith of this woman, and He told her, “For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.” Today there are many children of God refusing their blood-purchased portion of health in Christ and are throwing it away, while sinners are pressing through and picking it up frown under the table, as it were, and are finding the cure not only for their bodies, but for their spirits and souls as well. The Syrophenician woman went home and found that the devil had indeed gone out of her daughter. Today there is bread, there is life, there is health for every child of

Les grandes âmes apprécient la valeur des autres. Les grands cœurs émettent des jugements positifs. Ils illuminent et enrichissent la vie de ceux qui les entourent ; ils font jaillir des autres le meilleur, grâce aux rayons de soleil de leur appréciation.

Six people went into the house of a sick man to pray for him. He was an Episcopalian vicar, and lay in his bed utterly helpless, without even strength to help himself. He had read a little tract about healing and had heard about people praying for the sick, and sent for these friends, who, he thought, could pray the prayer of faith. He was anointed according to James 5:14, but, because he had no immediate manifestation of healing, he wept bitterly. The six people walked out of the room, somewhat crestfallen to see the man lying there in an unchanged condition. When they were outside, one of the six said, “There is one thing we might have done. I wish you would all go back with me and try it.” They went back and all got together in a group. This brother said, “Let us whisper the name of Jesus.” At first when they whispered this worthy name nothing seemed to happen. But as they continued to whisper, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” the power began to fall. As they saw that God was beginning to work, their faith and joy increased; and they whispered the name louder and louder. As they did so the man arose from his bed and dressed himself. The secret was just thus, those six people had gotten their eyes off the sick man, and they were just taken up with the Lord Jesus Himself, and their faith grasped the power that there is in His name. O, if people would only appreciate the power that there is in this name, there is no telling what would happen.

The Lord was looking for fruit on the tree. He found “nothing but leaves.” There are thousands of people like that. They dress up like Christians, but it is all leaves. “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit …” (John 15:8). He has no way in which to get fruit, only through us. We have not to be ordinary people. To be saved is to be an extraordinary man, an exposition of God. When Jesus was talking about the new life He said, “…Except a man be born again [of God], he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is

Never look back if you want the power o f God in your life. You will find out that in the measure you have allowed yourself to look back you have missed that which God has for you.

There is no limit to what our limitless God will do in response to a limitless faith.

You are in the right position when you allow the glory of the new life to cause you to act. Live in the Acts of the Apostles, and every day you will see some miracle worked by the power of the living God.

has done it,” he said. They rolled back the bed clothes and the doctors examined him, and the abscesses were cut clear away. The nurse cleaned the place where they had been. The doctors could see the bowels still open and they said to the wife, “We know that you have great faith, and we can see that a miracle has taken place. But you must let us unite these broken parts and put in silver tubes, and we know that

Lester Sumrall told a story of a conference he and Smith Wigglesworth were part of. It was the first time Sumrall had met Wigglesworth. Sumrall got up to preach. And he preached and preached. After a while, Wigglesworth came up behind him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, “Son, it would have been wise for you to have ended fifteen minutes ago, when the Holy Ghost ended.” And he shut down the meeting. So many people go beyond the Holy Spirit.

The power of God is beyond all our conception. The trouble is that we do not have the power of God in a full manifestation because of our finite thoughts, but as we go on and let God have His way, there is no limit to what our limitless God will do in response to a limitless faith. But you will never get anywhere except you are in constant pursuit of all the power of God.

So I have an extravagant God with extravagant language to make me an extravagant person-in wisdom. To this end, we pray that God will show us now why we really need the word of wisdom and how we may be in a place in which we will surely know it is of God.

THERE HAS BEEN A SILENT DIVORCE IN THE CHURCH, SPEAKING generally, between the Word and the Spirit. When there is a divorce, sometimes the children stay with the mother, sometimes with the father. In this divorce you have those on the Word side and those on the Spirit side. What is the difference? Those on the Word side stress earnestly contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, expository preaching, sound theology, rediscovering the doctrines of the Reformation—justification by faith, sovereignty of God. Until we get back to the Word, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. Those on the Spirit side stress getting back to the Book of Acts, signs, wonders, and miracles, gifts of the Holy Spirit—with places being shaken at prayer meetings, get in Peter’s shadow and you are healed, lie to the Holy Spirit and you are struck dead. Until we recover the power of the Spirit, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. The problem is, neither will learn from the other. But if these two would come together, the simultaneous combination would mean spontaneous combustion. And if Smith Wigglesworth’s prophecy got it right, the world will be turned upside down again.

These words were among the greatest that Jesus ever spoke: "The hour has come." Time was finished and eternity had begun for every soul that was covered with the blood. Until that hour, all people lived only to die, but the moment the sacrifice was made, it was not the end but only the beginning. The soul, covered with the blood, has moved from a natural to an eternal union with the Lord. Instead of death will be the fullness of life divine.

The best long-term results come from buying a big, well-diversified portfolio of financial securities, and trading as little as possible.

I refuse to be an ordinary man. You say, “Why do you?” Because I have an extraordinary God who makes extraordinary people.

You have promised it, Lord. Now do it.” God rejoices when we manifest a faith that holds Him to His word.

Blessed is the man who will swear to his own hurt and change not; who keeps the vow he has made to God; who is willing to lay his all at God's feet.

Beloved, now we are children of God.

man may be saved and still be carnally minded. When many people hear about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, their carnal minds at once arise against the Holy Spirit.

My heavenly bank, my heavenly bank, The house of God's treasure and store. I have plenty in here; I'm a real millionaire.

I don’t want them to see me anymore— only Jesus!” If

God says it; I believe it; and that settles it!” He

God has no use for any man who is not hungering and thirsting for yet more of Himself and His righteousness.

It is not the possession of extraordinary gifts that makes extraordinary usefulness, but the dedication of what we have to God.

Every fresh revelation calls for a new dedication.” He

God longs intensely for unhindered communication and total response between Him and the believer indwelt by the Spirit. This

It follows inevitably that if you believe God as a Person, you will believe every word that He speaks.

A preacher should not land at a place and say that God had sent him. I am always fearful when I hear a man advertising this. If he is sent of God, the saints will know it.

During the next hour she vomited out thirty-seven evil spirits and she named every one of them as they came out.

The purpose of all Scripture is to move us on to this wonderful and blessed elevation of faith where our constant experience is the manifestation of God’s life and power through us.

When the Holy Spirit comes, He will reveal things to you. Has He revealed them yet? He is going to do it. Just expect Him to do so. The best thing for you is to expect Him to do it now.

People do not expect to see signs and wonders today as the disciples saw them of old. Has God changed? Or has our faith waned so that we are not expecting the greater works that Jesus promised?

I know it was personally right, it was divinely right, for those apostles to hear what Jesus said and to tarry for the Holy Spirit; however, it is not right now to tarry for the Holy Spirit. Then why do we not all receive the Holy Spirit, you ask? Because our bodies are not ready for it; our temples are not cleansed. When our temples are purified and our minds are put in order so that carnalities and fleshly desires and everything contrary to the Spirit have gone, then the Holy Spirit can take full charge. The Holy Spirit is not a manifestation of carnality. There are any number of people who never read the Word of God who could not be led away by the powers of Satan. But the power of the Holy Spirit is most lovely, divine in all its construction. It is a great refiner. It is full of life, but it is always divine—never natural. If you deal in the flesh after you are baptized in the Holy Spirit, you cease to go on. Beloved, I want to speak about something greater; something to lift your minds, elevate your thoughts, and bring you into divine ways; something that elevates you out of yourself and into God, out of the world and into a place where you know you have rest for your feet, where you cease from your own works (Heb. 4:10), and where God works in you mightily “to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). When I think about a river—a pure, holy, divine river—I say, “What can stand against its inrush?” Wherever it is—in a railway coach, in the street, or in a meeting—its power and flow will always be felt; it will always do its work. Jesus spoke about the Holy Spirit that was to be given. I want you to think about how God gave it, how its coming was manifested, and its reception and its outflow after it had come.

Possess patience to such an extent that you can suffer anything for the church, for your friends, for your neighbors, or for anyone. Remember this: we build character in others as our character is built. As we are pure in our thoughts, are tender and gracious to other people, and possess our souls in patience (Luke 21:19), then people have a great desire for our fellowship in the Holy Spirit.

October 26 Endure Temptation Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. -James 1:12 Scripture reading: Psalm 139

There are people who begin waiting on God, and they do not know what they are waiting for—they have no idea. I believe that God is making the thing so that you cannot get out of it. You may refuse it, and you may come within its reach and come outside the boundaries of it, but it is for you. It is a personal baptism—it is not a church baptism. It is for the body of believers who are to be clothed with the power and unction, or anointing, of the Spirit by this glorious waiting. What do I mean by saying it is not a “church” baptism? Why, I mean that people get their minds on a building when I say “church.” You see, it is the believers who compose the “body” —believers in the Lord Jesus Christ—whatever sect or creed or denomination they are. I also tell you that Paul went so far as to say that some people have very strange ideas of who will be ready for the coming of the kingdom. All in Christ will be ready, and you have to decide whether you are in Christ or not. The Scripture says, in the first verse of Romans 8, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” If you are there—praise the Lord! That is a good position. I ask the Lord that He will bring us all into that place. What a wonder it will be.

Estos son días cuando necesitamos que nuestra fe sea fortalecida, cuando necesitamos conocer a Dios. Dios ha diseñado que el justo vivirá por fe. Cualquier hombre puede ser cambiado por fe, sin importar cual sea su situación. Yo sé que la Palabra de Dios es suficiente.

in you life, to let you know that you are from the dead quickened by the Spirit, made like unto Jesus. Glory to God! Oh, the word resurrection! I wish I could say it just on parallel lines with the word Jesus. They very harmoniously go together. Jesus is resurrection, and to know Jesus in this resurrection power is simply to see that you have no more to be dead but alive unto God by the Spirit.

Some people only come with a very small thought concerning God’s fullness, and a lot of people are satisfied with a thimbleful, and you can just imagine God saying, “Oh, if they only knew how much they could take away!” Other people come with a larger vessel, and they go away satisfied, but you can feel how much God is longing for us to have such a desire for more, such a longing as only God Himself can satisfy.

Ezekiel chapter 37. The only need of Ezekiel was to be in the Spirit, and while he was in the Spirit it came to him to prophesy to the dry bones and say, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord” (Ezek. 37:4). As he prophesies according to the Lord’s command he sees an “exceeding great army” rising up about him. The prophet obeyed God’s command, and all we have to do is exactly this—obey God. What is impossible with man is possible with God.

And while I say so much about the Holy Ghost today, I withdraw everything that doesn’t put Jesus in the ordered place He belongs, for when I speak about the Holy Ghost it is always with reference to revelations of Jesus. The Holy Ghost is only the revealer of the mighty Christ who has all for us that we may never know any weakness but all limitations are gone. You are now in a place where God has taken the ideal and moved you on with His own velocity, which has a speed beyond all human mind and thought. Glory to God!

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes (Matthew 11:25). What is there up with the wise man? A wise man is too careful. While he is in the operation of the Spirit, he wants to know what he is saying. No man can know what he is saying when the Spirit is upon him. His own mind is inactive. If you get into that near place, your mind is entirely obliterated and the mind of Christ comes by the power of the Spirit, and in that condition He prays and speaks in the Spirit as the Spirit gives utterance.

Miss Wigglesworth gave him an assessing look out of her remarkable blue eyes. “You’re a libertine? How very unique.” She gave a small fake yawn. She was, in that heartbeat, so perfect and so pure and so very dangerous indeed that all he could do was frighten her away. “Have you been listening at keyholes, Lazuli? I assure you, they have always been willing, even when I ask that they pretend otherwise.” She blushed deep pink at that – an appealing thing, the blood high under her cheeks, warm and subtle and alive. He wanted to delve into her, with teeth and body until she was ravaged and supine and wrecked and bleeding and his. She did not, as he had expected, break away from him mid-step. The blush was there, to be sure, but she was made of sterner stuff. Any true innocent would be repulsed by the intent in his tone. A woman without experience would fear the implication of his preferences – the certain acknowledgment that there was wolf, nothing but wolf, underneath all his icy indifference. Faith was intrigued. She tilted her head and looked hard at him, her lovely eyes flinty. “So, you’re just a beast who enjoys the chase, nothing else?” “Exactly so.” She threw it all at him. Like a piece of warm fresh meat, cut and dripping temptation, enough to make him salivate, to bait her trap. “You can’t catch me.” The waltz ended.

But look at Mary. When the angel came to her, Mary said, “Be it unto me according to thy word.” It was her Amen to the will of God. And God wants us with an Amen in our lives, an inward Amen, a mighty moving Amen, a God-inspired Amen, which says, “It is, because God has spoken. It cannot be otherwise. It is impossible to be otherwise.

We are in a bad condition if we have to pray for power when an occasion like this comes along, or if we have to wait until we feel a sense of His presence. The Lord's promise was, "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you," and if we will BELIEVE, the power of God will be always manifested when there is a definite need. When you exercise your FAITH, you will find that there is the greater power in you than that is in the world. Oh, to be awakened out of UNBELIEF into a place of daring for God on the authority of His blessed Book and the redemptive work of CHRIST!

I asked Smith Wigglesworth, “Wigglesworth, I’ve seen you dozens of times. You always look the same. Why?” He said, “Sumrall, I never ask Smith Wigglesworth how he feels. I tell him.” This was Smith Wigglesworth talking to Smith Wigglesworth. It was a spirit talking to a soul. His spirit within him was talking to his mind, his emotions, and his willpower—telling his mind what to think, his emotions how to feel, and his will what to decide. His spirit was the king of his life, motivated by faith, for if a man ever walked with God, Smith Wigglesworth was that man.

If  you believe it is the Lord’s will for you to suffer (sickness), why then are you trying to get out of it as quickly as you can. Drop the idea that you are so holy that God has to afflict you.

God has given us authority over all the power of the devil. Oh, that we may live in the place where we realize this always, and that were completely submitted to that authority! Smith - When you stay still, the devil will not disturb you.

The same unction, the same zeal, the same Holy Ghost power is at our command as it was at the command of Stephen and the apostles.

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Not only did this gain Sharpe his PhD, but it eventually evolved into a seminal paper on what he called the “capital asset pricing model” (CAPM), a formula that investors could use to calculate the value of financial securities. The broader, groundbreaking implication of CAPM was introducing the concept of risk-adjusted returns—one had to measure the performance of a stock or a fund manager versus the volatility of its returns—and indicated that the best overall investment for most investors is the entire market, as it reflects the optimal tradeoff between risks and returns.

McQuown argued that a more scientific approach to investing was the future. In his telling, the traditional approach followed a version of the “Great Man” theory first espoused by the nineteenth-century philosopher Thomas Carlyle. Some preternaturally gifted hero would pick stocks that he thought would rise. When his touch inevitably deserted him at some point—and in the 1960s it was invariably a “him”—the investor would simply transfer their hopes onto another Great Man. “The whole thing is a chance-driven process. It’s not systematic and there is lots we still don’t know about it and that needs study,” McQuown argued.

Never look back if you want the POWER of God in your life. You will find out that in the measure you have allowed yourself to look back, you have missed what God had for you.

Faith enables you to lay hold of what is and to get it out of the way for God to bring in something that is not.

   "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." Desire toward God, and you will have desires from God; and He will meet you on the line of those desires when you reach out in simple faith.

So many people would be saved, but they want to feel saved first. There was never a man who felt saved before he believed. God’s plan is always this, if you will believe, you shall see the glory of God.

The living God has chosen us for His divine inheritance, and He it is who is preparing us for our ministry, that it may be of God and not of man.

was doing this based on a gift of FAITH working in my heart and the word of wisdom that I have received from the Lord three days previous. Now, I can only operate in this realm when the Holy Ghost quickens me. I know that people hear my stories, and they want me to jump in and perform some miracle, but I’m not the miracle worker. I just simply do that which God quickens to my heart as he leads and guides me. When we arrived in York, Pennsylvania, we called Patty and told her we would meet her at the hospital. She met us in the main lobby with her sister. They were both extremely distraught and crying. It was absolutely understandable for their hearts to be broken over Jason.

I told him: no man who walks by FAITH is ever moved by the circumstances. I told him: when we Pray, we BELIEVE we have received. From that moment forward, we just begin to give thanks. This battle was won in Prayer before we ever got to the hospital. This is also very important when it comes to the salvation of your loved ones. Many times when you Pray, it will look like the situation even gets worse, but you must stand in FAITH, Trusting that God cannot fail.

I told him: no man who walks by FAITH is ever moved by the circumstances. I told him: when we Pray, we BELIEVE we have received. From that moment forward, we just begin to give thanks. This battle was won in Prayer before we ever got to the hospital. This is also very important when it comes to the salvation of your loved ones. Many times when you Pray, it will look like the situation even gets worse, but you must stand in FAITH, Trusting that God cannot fail. The problem is that many times people begin in FAITH and end in UNBELIEF when they do not see the manifestations of what they BELIEVE for. Even Jesus in his own hometown could not help them because of their UNBELIEF.

Given how investors preferred the use of brand-name indices, and how investor inflows and tradability is a virtuous circle for ETFs, it essentially allowed BGI to seize and fortify important tracts of the investment landscape undisturbed. The iShares Russell ETF alone manages about $70 billion today, more than its three biggest competitors combined. It was in effect what Silicon Valley today terms a “blitzscaling”—a well-funded, rapid, and aggressive move to build an unassailable market share as quickly as possible.

It is fair to say the attendees of the carnival-like conference just outside Miami took little note of McNabb’s consternation. Investors have in recent years been able to buy niche, “thematic” ETFs that purport to benefit from—deep breath—the global obesity epidemic; online gaming; the rise of millennials; the whiskey industry; robotics; artificial intelligence; clean energy; solar energy; autonomous driving; uranium mining; better female board representation; cloud computing; genomics technology; social media; marijuana farming; toll roads in the developing world; water purification; reverse-weighted US stocks; health and fitness; organic food; elderly care; lithium batteries; drones; and cybersecurity. There was even briefly an ETF that invested in the stocks of companies exposed to the ETF industry. Some of these more experimental funds gain traction, but many languish and are eventually liquidated, the money recycled into the latest hot fad.

THE POWER OF MSCI, FTSE RUSSELL, and S&P Dow Jones Indices is largely over only stock markets. Of even greater and direct importance to countries are their presence and weighting in various influential bond market indices. These may not have the cachet of the brand-name stock market benchmarks bandied about on TV bulletins, but indices like the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate or JPMorgan’s EMBI and GBI-EM are also powerful in their own way.

The seminal paper in the field was published in 1991 by William Sharpe, whose theories underpinned the original creation of the index fund, and was bluntly titled “The Arithmetic of Active Management.”16 This expanded on Sharpe’s earlier work, and addressed the suggestion that the index investing trend that was starting to gain ground at the time was a mere “fad.” The paper articulated what Sharpe saw as two iron rules that must hold true over time: The return on the average actively managed dollar will equal that of a dollar managed passively before costs, and after costs the return on that actively managed dollar will be less than that of a passively managed dollar. In other words, mathematically the market represents the average returns, and for every investor who outperforms the market someone must do worse. Given that index funds charge far less than traditional funds, over time the average passive investor must do better than the average active one. Other academics have later quibbled with aspects of Sharpe’s 1991 paper, with Lasse Heje Pedersen’s “Sharpening the Arithmetic of Active Management” the most prominent example. In this 2016 paper, Pedersen points out that Sharpe’s assertions rest on some crucial assumptions, such as that the “market portfolio” never actually changes. But in reality, what constitutes “the market” is in constant flux. This means that active managers can at least theoretically on average outperform it, and they perform a valuable service to the health of a markets-based economy by doing so. Nonetheless, Pedersen stresses that this should not necessarily be construed as a full-throated defense of active management. “I think that low-cost index funds is one of the most investor-friendly inventions in finance and this paper should not be used as an excuse by active managers who charge high fees while adding little or no value,” he wrote.17 “My arithmetic shows that active management can add value in aggregate, but whether it actually does, and how much, are empirical questions.

Although financial markets are a wildly more dynamic game, with infinitely more permutations and without the fixed rules of poker, the metaphor is a compelling explanation for why markets actually appear to be becoming harder to beat even as the tide of passive investing continues to rise. Mediocre fund managers are simply being gradually squeezed out of the industry. At the same time, the number of individual investors—the proverbial doctors and dentists getting stock tips on the golf course and taking a bet—has gradually declined, depriving Wall Street of the steady stream of “dumb money” that provided suckers for the “smart money” of professional fund managers to take advantage of.

Perhaps there may be an element of the distortionary effects fingered by the likes of Green. But most fund managers willingly admit that the average skill and training of the industry keeps getting higher, requiring constant reinvention, retraining, and brain-achingly hard work. The old days of “have a hunch, buy a bunch, go to lunch” are long gone. Once upon a time, simply having an MBA or a CFA might be considered an edge in the investment industry. Add in the effort to actually read quarterly financial reports from companies and you had at least a good shot at excelling. Nowadays, MBAs and CFAs are rife in the finance industry, and algorithms can read thousands of quarterly financial reports in the time it takes a human to switch on their computer.

In 2019, Cyrus Taraporevala, the head of State Street Global Advisors, joked at a conference that the industry was at a crossroads, with “one path leading to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction.”25 Although he was being tongue-in-cheek, his words were indicative of the widespread pessimism in large parts of the investment industry.

Initially the common ownership theory was dismissed as a loony idea from ivory-tower economists. After all, the airline industry is infamously bankruptcy-prone and looked like poor evidence of anticompetitive behavior, overt or otherwise. Richard Branson, the billionaire entrepreneur, once joked that the best way to become an aviation millionaire was to be a billionaire and invest in an airline. However, the theory gradually started to garner attention. “Are Index Funds Evil?” was the provocative title of one piece examining the subject in The Atlantic in 2017.18

This may seem shrill, but in the United States, the birthplace of index investing, the trend is now stark, entrenched, and accelerating. Over the past decade, about 80 cents of every dollar that has gone into the US investment industry has ended up at Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock. As a result, the combined stake in S&P 500 companies held by the Big Three has quadrupled over the past two decades, from about 5 percent in in 1998 to north of 20 percent today.

The Bogle Boys. Vanguard’s founder Jack Bogle always had a young assistant to mentor, and every year all past and present assistants would have a boozy Christmas dinner with their boss. From top left to right: Jeremy Duffield, Jim Riepe, Daniel Butler, Jan Twardowski, Duncan McFarland. From bottom left to right: Jack Brennan, Tim Buckley, Jack Bogle, Jim Norris.