SoapBox Ep.5 - £2.2 Trillion Idle, Mag Seven Panic & the Behavioural Wrecking Ball

Matt Pitcher and Abraham Okusanya are back on the Soapbox with no guest, no filter, just two advisers getting into the numbers that matter.

This episode they dig into the Dimson, Marsh & Staunton Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2026 and the Bessembinder paper, and the findings are uncomfortable. In 1900, railroads made up 63% of the US market. Today, less than 1%. Yet they still outperformed. 59% of individual stocks will lose you money over their lifetime. The median stock return is negative. And yet the market has created $91 trillion of wealth. The case for buying the haystack has never been stronger or more ignored.

Then Matt takes on the great wealth destroyers: active managers quietly costing clients half a million pounds, lifestyling in pension schemes that should have died with the annuity era, risk profiling tools nudging clients into less equity than they need, and the £2.2 trillion sitting dead in UK bank accounts shrinking in real terms while advisers watch on.

Blunt, data-heavy, and genuinely useful for any adviser who wants the arguments and the evidence in one place.

Resources mentioned:

• Bessembinder Paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6438198DMS Yearbook 2026 Summary: https://www.ubs.com/global/en/investment-bank/insights-and-data/articles/global-investment-returns-yearbook-2026.html
• FCA Trail Commission Review: https://citywire.com/new-model-adviser/news/fca-to-review-674m-adviser-trail-commissions/a2486582

📩 Review and screenshot it to Abraham on LinkedIn for a free copy of Nick Murray's This Time Is Different