This new video by James Shack covers some similar points to Benβs on the same topic but with a slightly less adversarial tone and a more of a UK focus so I thought it might be worth sharing as well.
Also since this thread was created Freetrade have started to add a lot of passive factor index ETFs which make targeting a specific risk factor more simple. For example now that we have a Quality Factor ETF itβs possible to invest based on earnings quality without using dividend yield as a proxy for this.
Apple is the highest weighted company in this index and has a high total yield (recently 6-8%) but it doesnβt show up prominently in dividend indices because it distributes most of its excess cash using buybacks rather than dividends, even though the result is functionality identical.