Hendrik Bessembinder
User: Discuss what these sources say about the extreme nature of returns (Bessembinder research), in the larger context of the evolution of core investment philosophy. Model: Hendrik Bessembinder’s famous paper, “Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?”, reveals the extreme inequality of wealth creation in the stock market, a finding that has become a crucial cornerstone in reshaping core investment philosophy . The Extreme Nature of Returns (Core Findings of Bessembinder’s Research) Bessembinder’s research points out that, in general, stocks do not outperform short-term Treasury bills . The entire net wealth creation of the US stock market since 1926 (nearly $35 trillion) is collectively attributable to a mere 4.3% of listed companies . Beyond this best-performing tiny fraction of companies, the vast majority of firms either destroyed wealth or merely offset the gains of others, making their overall net contribution the same as earning one-month Treasury bill interest rates . The Evolution of Core Investment Philosophy The reality that investment performance lies in the extremes completely upends traditional investment dogmas, pushing the evolution of investment philosophy across several core dimensions: Shattering Traditional Financial Dogma: Bessembinder’s data indicates that the traditional Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) makes no sense, and there is no systemic relationship between risk and reward . Therefore, the traditional fund manager’s approach of working through everything on offer by under-weighting and over-weighting against a benchmark is clearly misguided . Active Management’s Goal Shifts to “Capturing Outliers”: Since most stocks will add no value to a portfolio, the core job of portfolio managers becomes giving themselves the best possible chance of owning those extremely rare “outliers” . Investors must embrace asymmetric returns and abandon any angst about a small group of stocks dominating portfolio returns, as this is simply the natural order of markets . Abandoning Short-Term Forecasting, Emphasizing Imagination and Creativity: To capture extreme returns, investors must doggedly refuse to make forecasts of short-term earnings, cash flows, or share prices . Trying to be short-term “correct” is actually the enemy of good investing, because if you are merely forecasting the most likely outcome over the next year or two, you will not predict a disruptive discontinuity on a spreadsheet . Instead, investing requires immense creativity and the courage to boldly imagine how extraordinarily large and supra-competitive a promising company can become in our era . This capacity to imagine is more vital than IQ, academic qualifications, or accounting details on a spreadsheet . Lengthening Investment Horizons and Learning to “Suffer”: In the pursuit of capturing extreme returns, a straight, exponential bottom-left to top-right line of compounding is an illusion; in reality, wealth accumulation is jagged and painful . Because extreme success requires a long time horizon to fully blossom, investors must build mechanisms to avoid the contamination of short-term noise (such as abolishing quarterly performance reviews) and learn how to suffer through missed earnings, immense share price volatility, and external skepticism, resolutely refusing to interrupt the compounding process of great businesses . In summary, because returns exhibit an extreme power-law distribution, the core investment philosophy has shifted from traditional “risk control, high win rates, and short-term correctness” to “relying on long-term horizons, tolerating massive short-term volatility and uncertainty, and using highly imaginative research to capture that sub-5% of great companies” .
Hendrik Bessembinder的著名论文《Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?》揭示了股市财富创造的极端不平衡性，这一发现成为了重塑核心投资哲学的关键基石。
回报的极端性（Bessembinder 研究的核心发现） Bessembinder的研究指出，从总体来看，股票的回报并不优于短期国库券。自1926年以来，美国股市创造的所有净财富（近35万亿美元）仅仅归功于4.3%的上市公司,除了表现最好的这极小部分公司之外，其余绝大多数公司要么在毁灭财富，要么仅仅抵消了其他公司的亏损，其整体净贡献与持有单月国库券的收益无异。
核心投资哲学的演变
这种“投资表现存在于极端之中”的事实，彻底颠覆了传统的投资理念，并推动了投资哲学在以下几个核心维度的演进：
打破传统金融学教条： Bessembinder的数据表明，传统的资本资产定价模型（CAPM）毫无意义，风险与回报之间并不存在系统性的联系。因此，传统基金经理那种试图通过在基准指数上进行微调（超配或低配）来构建投资组合的方法被认为是严重误导的。主动管理的目标转向“捕获异常值（Outliers）”： 既然大多数股票无法为投资组合增值，投资组合管理者的核心工作就变成了尽最大可能去持有那些极少数的“异常值”公司 ,
投资者必须拥抱不对称回报，不再因为少数几只股票主导了整体投资回报而感到焦虑，因为这本来就是市场的自然法则。
放弃短期预测，强调想象力与创造力： 为了抓住极端的回报，投资者必须放弃对短期收益、现金流或短期股价的精准预测。追求短期“正确”反而是优秀投资的敌人，因为如果只是预测未来一两年的最可能结果，就不可能在电子表格中预测出那些颠覆性的突变。相反，投资需要极大的创造力，需要去大胆想象一家公司未来能达到何种超乎寻常的、具有统治力的规模，这种对未来的想象力比智商或财务报表上的会计细节更为重要
拉长投资视野并学会“承受痛苦”： 在捕捉极端回报的过程中，直线上升的复利增长只是假象，现实中的财富积累往往是参差不齐且充满痛苦的。由于需要长期的坚守才能让极端的成功结出果实，投资者必须建立免受短期噪音干扰的机制（例如取消季度绩效评估），并学会忍受季度盈利不及预期、股价的大幅波动以及外界的质疑，坚决不打断优质企业的复利过程
总而言之，由于回报呈现出极端的幂律分布，核心投资哲学已经从传统的“控制风险、追求胜率和短期正确”，演变为了“依靠长期视野、容忍巨大的短期波动与不确定性，并通过极具想象力的研究去捕捉那不到5%的伟大企业”。
关于您提到的“创造了80%以上财富的具体股票数量”，提供的资料中并没有给出精确到80%分界线的具体股票数量。
不过，资料中包含了一份详细的数据图表，对这4.3%（即1,092家）表现最好的公司所创造的近35万亿美元总净财富进行了极其细致的梯队划分。具体分布如下：
最顶尖的90家公司创造了 17.4万亿美元 的净财富（这部分占据了全部净增财富的一半，即50%）。
随后的205家公司创造了 8.7万亿美元 的净财富（占总财富的25%）。
剩下的797家公司创造了另外的 8.7万亿美元（占总财富的25%）。
通过这些数据可以得出，排名前295家（90家 + 205家）公司就已经创造了股市总净财富的75%（26.1万亿美元）。要达到您所问的“80%以上的财富”，所需公司数量必定介于295家至1092家之间，但仅凭现有资料无法给出精确数值。如果您需要准确知道创造80%财富的具体公司数量，可能需要独立查阅 Hendrik Bessembinder 这篇论文的原始统计附录。
此外，资料也对未能进入这4.3%的其余24,240家公司的去向进行了细化： 在这两万多家公司中，有9,579家（占总数的37.8%）在其上市周期内实际上创造了正向财富，但令人遗憾的是，它们的正向收益被另外14,661家公司（占总数的57.9%）的财富毁灭完全抵消。这就导致了这庞大的95.7%的上市公司的整体净财富贡献为零，其实际收益仅仅与持有单月国库券相当。