As was highlighted previously by Tim Paulin, institutional investors who represent the majority of US equity market investment dollar value, hold index funds as their core equity portfolio. The integrity of the article suffers as a result of not highlighting the value of these index holdings as percentage of total US equity market capitalization.

Index funds and ETFs have led to the democratization of the US equity market and a significant portion of global equity markets, ex-US. John Bogle's first listed index fund was launched in 1976 and investors have not looked back.

Index funds are eating the world and the creation of the ETF only accelerated this trend. To paraphrase, "the eating will continue until alpha improves".

John Bogle's 8 rules for investing:

Select low-cost funds
Consider carefully the added costs of advice
Do not overrate past fund performance
Use past performance to determine consistency and risk
Beware of stars (as in, star mutual fund managers)
Beware of asset size
Don’t own too many funds
Buy your fund portfolio – and hold it