Bridger Pennington explains how Wall Street funds like Vanguard and BlackRock now own 1 in 5 homes in the US and control stakes across media and Fortune 500 companies. He started Fund Launch to teach people how funds work so they can push back against this consolidation of power.
Chapters
Last year, one in five homes were purchased by Wall Street, which is pretty wild. Funds are all over the world are consolidating industries. If you look at the media industry, like Disney owns everybody. Fox Media, like they own like everybody. It's very—I don't know—it's a weird time to be in this world. And our whole mission at Fund Launch is to help people democratize Wall Street. We need—I think we need more people like me and you understanding this game of funds, launching funds so that one or two or three companies don't just own the whole world. Right now, Vanguard. BlackRock, they actually have ownership in pretty much every Fortune 500 company on earth and they do like what they want. If they want to have a certain initiative, they make it happen. If they want to buy homes or set home prices a certain amount, they make it happen. And I think more of us, the reason they have that power is because they built funds. We, people like me and you, need to understand how this game of funds works and like how to take over and use this to our advantage.