Vanguard

“They have 20,000 employees, they have fifty million investors worldwide, but notably, the last thing I'll say is, a little over 90% of their investors And their investor capital is in the US. So they're not nearly as global as BlackRock or Invesco or Franklin …”

“Because of Vanguard's relentless cost-cutting and low fees, Vanguard has saved investors over five hundred billion dollars in fees and trading costs since its founding in 1975, and as a recent book The Bogle Effect argues, Vanguard's actions also forced the ha…”

“Vanguard's average ETF and mutual fund expense ratio is now down to 0.07% with some ETFs, like the one that I'm in, the VLO is 0.03%. The industry average across mutual funds and ETF is 44 basis points. So that is six and a half times Vanguard's average.”

“None of those other firms would be in this market or doing it in the same way if it weren't for Vanguard.”

“Vanguard is the largest shareholder of most U.S. Corporations, and together with the other big index funds like BlackRock, State Street, and Fidelity, they own 24% of the entire U.S. Stock market.”

“From 2014 to 2019, Vanguard takes in 1.2 trillion in cash inflows versus five hundred billion for the whole rest of the industry combined.”

“The investors are the board of directors, or elect the board of directors, and thus will always vote To lower fees when they can lower fees, because it's in their own interest.”

“Jack had the insight that running a successful mutual fund is actually not a differentiated product. It is a commodity. What you are seeking is the highest possible long-term return on your capital. That is not like buying a unique piece of jewelry. It is like…”

“I think this may be the most extreme example of counterpositioning ever. Bogle did something that was essentially non-economic. There's no economic incentive to create this company in the first place. Their ownership and fee structure was an advantage that can…”

“Vanguard, the downside of its structure is that there are no excess profits that can be invested for the long term in things like technology and things like customer service.”

“And then the best part, Wellington Management Still does the investment management for the Wellington fund within Vanguard, even to this day.”

“84% of Vanguard's funds have outperformed their peers over the last 10 years.”

“People estimate that Vanguard pays S&P Global something like three to four hundred million dollars per year, and is their single largest licensing client, and the licensing segment of their business as a whole does 1.85 billion dollars a year, and to your poin…”

“He waits a 128 days in the hospital waiting for a heart transplant. And he keeps working the whole time. He hasn't officially transitioned out of the CEO role and given it to Brennan yet.”

“In May of 2024, Vanguard made another big CEO announcement that they were bringing on the first outside CEO in the firm's entire 50 year history, Saleem Ramji, from BlackRock, where he was, until that point in time, head of the iShares division.”

“So total assets is now 12 trillion dollars. Two trillion of that, interestingly, is active.”

“He was born with a rare genetic heart disease called arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia, or ARVD. And that means that Jack suffers his first heart attack in 1960 at age 31.”

“First of all, you should know Vanguard did not lay anyone off during the financial crisis, which is kind of unbelievable.”

“99% of Vanguard's AUM came after Jack stepped down.”

“If you were to try to start a new one today, in order to break even, you probably need one or two percent fees. Starting from a zero asset base, and so you'd be inherently non-competitive. You, if you're not already big, or you don't go raise a giant amount of…”

“So many of their customers, of their AUM, don't actually have a relationship with the company. They are invested in Vanguard ETFs via their direct relationship with a different brokerage, primarily Fidelity.”

“There is this interesting question, which is that they haven't really had any new innovations in a while, call it a decade, that Have been really meaningful to the business and that they've continued to scale.”

“There actually is no built-in incentive or obligation to grow. With a structure like Vanguard. The only reason to do so is if you believe the mission of the company either As set up by Jack, or as it should be today, is to bring the service to as many people a…”

“I mean, even Vanguard's real estate on their campus in Malvern, when they were constructing that, they tapped the shareholders, they tapped the fund holders for essentially construction loans.”

“At the time of his death, Vanguard managed an aggregate of five trillion dollars over twenty million clients.”

“There's no chance that I'm going to sell my Vanguard index fund and realize the capital gains tax only to switch to a different index fund.”

“They manage in 2019 13 of the 15 largest individual funds in the entire world.”

“Fidelity is just a better product and product experience than Vanguard. So during the pandemic especially, it exposed that Vanguard's customer service and technology is like jank. It is not good. And there were a lot of horror stories of trades not going throu…”