This time next century, we’ll be billionaires

Your 100-year-old spinster Great-Aunt Maggie dies. The family solicitor calls you in. You are expecting a small bungalow, several boxes of yellowing paperwork, and perhaps a lecture about probate. Maggie had always seemed almost aggressively frugal. She wore old clothes. She walked to the library. She grew vegetables. She did not own a car. As a child, you vaguely wondered if she might be poor. Apparently not. Because Maggie’s estate turns out to be worth about $1bn. How? You’d always had a vague idea that Aunt Maggie had once been American. It turns out Maggie’s father was a notable American financier. In 1926, when Maggie was still in her cot, he put $53,300 into the JPMorgan S&P 500 Zero-Fee Magically Accumulating No-Tax Miracle Fund. Then Maggie did the hard bit. Nothing. Maggie did not sell. She did not switch platforms. She did not rotate into Japan in 1989. She did not decide Cisco looked cheap in 2000. She did not panic in 2008. During COVID, she didn’t go on TV and cry. She…