According to the World Economic Forum, retail investors are steadily making up a growing percentage of global equity markets.

I think this is good, or at least has the potential to be good: Engaged, aware equity market participants fuel capitalism: the successes, the necessary failures. An investing-aware culture tends to breed entrepreneurs and opportunity.

There's a dark side of the coin, too: Many retail investors aren't very aware. Some invest in ways that increase volatility, which, in most cases, lowers valuations. And a cynic might argue that at least in the US, robust private market funding keeps good companies private for longer – why bother with the cost and mental energy of an IPO if you don't have to? – and only when their lemons are mostly squeezed do the now-past-their-growth-prime companies go public.

The truth is a mix of both, but one interesting truth is how company investor relations departments appear to have (and have not) evolved.

In the below video, I talk with Austin Moss about his research – which consisted of sending many fake emails to IR departments, from retail-seeming accounts (e.g., "[email protected]"), institutional-seeming accounts that were in fact made up, female names, and traditionally Black names — into what IR responds to, and what they don't.

Interestingly, IR does not discriminate between retail and institutional investors – which pretty much everyone on Wall Street assumed they did, and which would be a reasonable thing to do. Austin found that in aggregate, IR departments do discriminate against female names and Black names.

It's not the most chipper topic, but it's important societally, and kudos to Austin for shining light on this.