When you hear the name "Booth," your mind might drift to a classroom. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is one of the world’s premier institutions, training future executives and economists. But if I asked you about the David behind that name, you might draw a blank. While Warren Buffett is a household name, David Booth—the founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA)—is far less well-known, despite helping usher in one of the greatest financial revolutions of the past 50 years.
That story is finally getting its due with Tune Out the Noise, a new documentary directed by Oscar-winner Errol Morris and made available for free on YouTube. Yes, you read that right, a film on the birth of passive investing, market efficiency, and academic financial theory is free to stream, and somehow, it’s... captivating.
The film traces Booth’s intellectual journey from graduate student to billionaire fund founder, set against the backdrop of radical ideas coming out of the University of Chicago in the 1970s. His professors—future Nobel laureates like Eugene Fama—were formulating a view of markets that would change investing forever: that markets are largely efficient, and that most active managers, after fees, underperform simple, diversified portfolios.
What makes Tune Out the Noise remarkable isn’t just the material, it’s how it's told. Morris doesn’t shy away from the dense stuff (regression analysis, probability theory), but he wraps it in narrative and character. It becomes a story of misfits, academics, and renegades who took a chance on ideas that Wall Street laughed at. And won.
There’s a quiet subversiveness to DFA’s story. At a time when financial discourse is louder and more chaotic than ever—meme stocks, speculative frenzies, hot takes on CNBC—Booth’s approach is almost zen-like. Invest broadly. Don’t try to outguess the market. Stay disciplined. Let evidence, not emotion, guide you.
This isn’t just theoretical. DFA now manages nearly $800 billion. And yet, it all started in a Brooklyn apartment, with Booth and co-founder Rex Sinquefield building portfolios based on cold research and unshakeable belief in market efficiency.
One of the film’s strongest themes is the role of chance. Booth openly acknowledges that many turning points such as meeting his professors, and starting DFA when he did were pure luck. But the takeaway isn’t to chase luck. It’s to recognize it when it arrives and not let it slip through your fingers.
What also struck me is how the film doesn’t pretend to be neutral and it’s technically considered advertising by the SEC. But it never feels like a commercial. Morris brings his investigative eye to the material, even becoming a DFA investor himself. There’s one line in the film where he admits: “There’s no amount of rational persuasion that could convince me never to speculate again. But I have evidence to know better.” It’s that tension—between the emotional pull of speculation and the rational clarity of evidence—that the film handles so well.
Tune Out the Noise is a must-watch for anyone curious about how modern finance came to be. For investors like us, who pore over shareholder letters and chase the next insight into how markets work, this documentary is more than a film. It’s a reminder. That clarity beats cleverness. That systems outlast stars. And that, sometimes, the quietest ideas are the most powerful.
