Opinion
Comegys: The S&P 500 Should Not Be Your Benchmark or Portfolio
“The S&P 500 should not be your benchmark nor your portfolio.”
Opinion
Comegys: Vanguard Believes Private Assets Belong in Every Portfolio
“We believe privates belong in everyone's portfolio.”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard Returns 95% of Securities Lending Revenue to Funds
“95% of the money made in the program goes back to the fund. The five percent of it Is kept to run the program.”
Insight
Comegys: Best Practice Is Adding IPOs to Index Funds on Day 3 to 5
“The minute a company comes public, it belongs in an index fund. We've had that belief for a long time. You might need a few days for it to get trading and figure out price discovery. Our best indexes add those securities in day three or day five.”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard Owns Average of 8% of Free-Floated U.S. Companies
“We own on average about eight percent of every company in America that's free floated. Most importantly, we say, who are we owning them on behalf of? These are fifty million Americans, not Vanguard owning eight percent of the company.”
Opinion
Comegys: Much Index Fund Innovation Is Marketing-Driven and Harms Investors
“Unfortunately, a lot of Index innovation is marketing positioning for sales and not good for investors.”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard avoids niche thematic index funds like airline ETFs
“We've stayed away from things that are hot or nichey. I don't think you're going to see us offer a jet index like others have done, capturing airline returns. Too narrow, too specific for us. Better served by an active investor.”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard index funds deviate from benchmarks to harvest excess returns
“At times we will do small deviations from the index where we see that we can recover value for our shareholders. Maybe there's a corporate action. Maybe you could take cash or shares. We're going to take the one that has the greater value. Maybe the index trea…”
Insight
Comegys: Secondary Offerings Are Usually Bought Cheaper Before Index Addition
“Statistically, we've seen that we can buy it from the bank at the time of offer, and by the time it's added to the index, we've usually bought it at a lower price than when it's added.”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard Avoids Telling Companies What Businesses to Operate
“We stay away from things like telling the company what business to be in or how to operate their business. We're more about making sure we get good governance over a long period of time.”
Disclosure
Vanguard Offers Fund Shareholders Five Proxy Voting Policy Choices
“We've introduced investor choice. Investor choice is allow the shareholders of our funds to express a point of view. Around how they want the companies in our portfolios to be run. For that, we think about returning the vote to them and they can choose one of …”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard Differentiates by Combining Portfolio Manager and Trader Roles
“Number one is this portfolio manager trader is one person or one team. It's the ability to instantaneously make the trade-off between I could trade something exactly like the index. I think I might be able to add value. I can make that decision because I have …”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard takes tiny active bets in index funds within tracking budget
“We're taking very small bets where we have 25 years of history of running index funds where we believe this is something where we can add value. It's no different than an active manager. It's a measured risk. It's just extraordinarily tiny compared to taking a…”
Insight
Comegys: Shrinking Public Markets Primarily Eliminated Micro-Caps Without Harming Returns
“When you go and you dig into it, you discover what we lost was a lot of really small companies, a lot of micro cap securities, a lot of small cap companies, and for long-term returns, it's not clear you lost much.”
Assertion Supported
Comegys: Vanguard Executes $1 Trillion Annually Using Algorithmic Trading Technology
“You don't trade on average a trillion dollars of execution on an annual basis by going in and touching every stock. We're using algo's technology to do it.”
Assertion Contradicted
Comegys: Vanguard Was 80% Active and 20% Passive 25 Years Ago
“We were still 80% active at the time, 20% passive, but you could see what we were doing.”
Assertion Supported
Comegys: Vanguard S&P 500 Tracking Error Is Typically Under One Basis Point
“Something like a 500 index fund, we're gonna see tracking error be no more than a couple basis points. Typically, less than one.”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard Manages Approximately $8.5 Trillion in Index Fund Assets
“We have about eight and a half trillion of index fund assets.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Comegys: Vanguard Investor Holding Periods Average Five to Ten Years
“The majority of our investors are long-term holders, whether they're in ETFs or mutual funds. Holding periods at Vanguard are five to 10 years.”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard Partners With HarbourVest for High-Net-Worth Private Equity
“We do have a partnership with Harbor Vests for some of our high net worth retail investors. We've had some success there gathering assets.”
Disclosure
Comegys: Vanguard's Global Indexing Group Employs Roughly 50 People
“I have roughly 30 people here in the U.S. I have another 20 folks globally.”
