The Idiot Index

Applied to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) — owners and operators of income-producing real estate. Revenue is rental income, not goods sold, so Markup ratios are not meaningful (no COGS in the traditional sense). REITs are legally required to distribute 90%+ of taxable income as dividends to maintain their tax-advantaged status, so the Capital Extraction ratio is structurally near or above 1.0 across the entire sector — the more interesting comparison is Labor Share (REITs run with small workforces relative to revenue) and Executive Extraction. Future methodology versions may add FFO/AFFO-based variants since GAAP Net Income is heavily distorted by depreciation in this sector.

Required disclosure under Dodd-Frank Section 953(b) since 2018. Filed in DEF 14A proxy statements. The dashboard aggregates the disclosure across the top 50 and ranks.

Source data: CEO total compensation and median employee compensation, both as filed in the company's most recent DEF 14A. When the ratio is XBRL-tagged we use the tagged value; otherwise the narrative disclosure is parsed (~99% accuracy).