The legend of the stock markets - which dictates the holdings of the big ETFs - is retiring

David Blitzer, the US Stock Exchange Icons, retired at the end of August, after nearly a quarter of a century of stock selection, which is the most closely watched index in America.

Blitzer, who watched the S & P 500 and the 123-year-old Dow Jones Industrial Average for years, is seen as a luminary among those who follow indexing - selecting individual stocks (or assets) in them.

The 70-year-old is at the head of S & P's stock exchange commission, which helped define the S & P 500 and Dow, with about $ 10 trillion in stock-traded funds or ETFs tied to the S & P 500, allowing all investors to buy cheap and efficient stock market exposure in popular products such as SPDR S & P 500 ETF and SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust.

ETF.com in 2015 called Blitzer the "legend of indexing." In 2017, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, he was likened to the "Guardian of the S & P 500".

"I'm not sure what it means to be a legend," he said. "Being commented on as such is something great and great honor."

Blitzer first joined McGraw Hill Companies in 1980 as a corporate economist. In 1982, he was appointed chief economist at Standard & Poor, and later, in 1989, he joined the Indexing Committee, which then headed in 1995.

Looking ahead, Blitzer commented that investors are facing a number of uncertainties that can create a large market volatility.

"Voltaire is very intriguing," he said, speaking of the end of 2018 - the worst collapse of Christmas events in history.

The big risk is "when markets fall - and they will - people will be startled and will stop investing, and when they fall they will start and sell - after which the markets may not recover."

With regard to his long career: "Looking back, I have no complaints, everything was amazing, and I'm sure that everything that follows will also be great."

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