The Idiot Index

Applied to banks, insurers, asset managers, and exchanges. The standard Markup formulas (Revenue/COGS) are not meaningful here — banks have no Cost of Goods Sold; their economics run on interest spreads, premiums, and fees. The Shareholder Extraction ratio (which divides by R&D) is also not meaningful — financial firms typically report no R&D. The load-bearing indicators in this sector are Labor Share, Executive Extraction, and Capital Extraction (the universal share-of-net-income returned to shareholders). Markup-family rows are intentionally not computed for this sector; future methodology versions may add Net Interest Margin Inversion and Combined Ratio variants designed for bank and insurance economics.

The multiplier after legitimate operations. A high Markup combined with a low Operational Markup tells a specific story: surplus is being reinvested in the business. A high Markup combined with a high Operational Markup tells the opposite story: surplus is going to shareholders.

Source data: Revenues, CostOfGoodsAndServicesSold, OperatingExpenses (us-gaap) or equivalents in IFRS.