The problem with broader indexes is that they invest in stocks that are subject to less scrutiny (small caps / mid caps) so it creates a vector for a pump and dump. I'm not saying that the S&P 500 is the be all and end all of American index investing, but I wouldn't want the S&P 500k either.
It doesn't really work like that. Total Stock Market index funds are fine investments, which hold around 4000 US stocks. And since they are usually market-cap weighted, your exposure to each small-cap stock is small, so pump and dump isn't a real concern.
Yeah, you, and the people downvoting me, don't really understand what I'm saying.
Imagine I start a company and I get my friends to buy up the shares of it on the stock market. Now imagine the market cap is $10m the day before it joins the Russell 5000. The next day a seperate company goes bankrupt and my company is now 1/100000 of the Russell 5000, which means that ETFs that track that index are now buying roughly 20% of my stock, which raises the price to $15m. Next my friends can slowly sell out for the amount that they pumped, but they will never trigger a mass sell off, because I always had a controlling stake from the beginning.
