Jack Bogle

“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…”

“Back in 1951, Jack was a little ahead of his time because professional fund managers were a small, small minority at the market back then. There were a lot of other players, mostly unsophisticated players, mostly retail traders, and so it really is not inconce…”

“Well, so Jack's Jerry Maguire moment here is he gives a speech to the whole firm where he throws out this idea that, hey, maybe we should actually mutualize The firm's funds. Dissolve the management company or have the fund itself acquire the management compan…”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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 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…”

“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…”

“There's gonna be lots of funds that you can be in that will outperform in fits and starts, but if you wanna be the, in the upper decile, After 40 years, then it turns out owning the market with no fees is an almost surefire way to do it.”

“In the case where an LP invests in a NAV lending fund that extends a loan to one of their private equity funds, that investor loses by the fees it pays to both sides, just like Jack Bogle's critique of active management in public equities.”

“Jack was at the old fashioned mutual fund, balanced fund manager, Wellington management, and he was terrific at doing what was traditional in the trade at those days. Selling, selling, selling, selling. Most of the things that he would now be known for, he was…”

“The only thing that's a real common denominator is Jack had this wonderful vision of who he was and how he wanted to be seen, and he nurtured that vision, and he had it down pat, so every journalist who came to spend some time with Jack would get the same stor…”

“Then when he got to combine with Wellington and Thorndike, Doran, Payne, and Lewis to create the merger made in heaven, as he would have described it at the time. And within a couple of years, it just didn't work out because it was a culture clash of the worst…”

“Well, he thought he'd raise a hundred and fifty million dollars and go into the retail index fund business. In fact, it didn't raise a 150, it didn't raise a hundred, didn't raise 50, and you could just see the expectations coming down as the road show went fa…”

“At this time, he had the guy who invented ETFs, Nathan Most, came to Jack and said, this is just right for you. And Jack looked at him and said, no, it's not. It's speculative. I'm not going to have anything to do with it. And so for years, Vanguard wouldn't t…”

“Whereas Jack Bogle opposed automation because it costs too damn much. Well, you know, the capital cost of a computer is a lot, but over time it saves enough money to pay for itself. Jack Bogle just honestly didn't catch that, but Brennan understood it, and he …”

“Jack Bogle had a view of Really, you should index everything, and over the long term, you'll get there at much lower fees, and everything will compound, but the reality is, is that most institutions can't invest that way for just by their very structure, or by…”

“And they brought in a group of young managers from Boston and basically blew the fund up, and they went from, you know, top decile to lower, to lowest decile, and this is a true story.”

“It was in, ah, maybe Clash of the Culture is one of his books, where he spoke about, he started a fund based on technical analysis, and obviously, ah, it didn't do so well.”