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.

Captures gross extraction per dollar of input. A markup ratio of 5.0 means the company collects $5 in revenue for every $1 of cost-of-goods.

Source data: Revenues (us-gaap:Revenues / ifrs-full:Revenue) and CostOfGoodsAndServicesSold (us-gaap) or CostOfSales (ifrs-full).