The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 62 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Chhabra: The institutionalized David Swensen endowment model no longer works
“I'm not clear that the entire ecosystem of the Swenson model that had become so super institutionalized really works any longer. The fees are high, the fees are asymmetric, the LPGP risks are different, and I think we should explore different models, and I thi…”
Passive investor ESG proposals are mostly value-neutral or value-destructive
“And they might have 10 or 15 ideas for ESG change. And, you know, of those, call it 10 ideas. Five might be value neutral. Three might be value destructive, a waste of time or a waste of capital without return. And two might be value accretive.”
Comegys: Vanguard Believes Private Assets Belong in Every Portfolio
“We believe privates belong in everyone's portfolio.”
Vanguard prepared a $5B iShares bid using Warren Buffett debt
“Well, first they went to Omaha, Nebraska and talked to Warren Buffett. Would he be interested in lending some money? And then they explained to him through their banker that they had the ability to raise money by passing it back to the funds anytime they wante…”
Vanguard chose private equity over hedge funds and liquid alternatives
“We did a ton of research on liquid alternatives, hedge funds, all the different asset classes. We kept coming back to private equity as an area that we felt was enduring, that could improve our client outcomes”
Vanguard's long-term aspiration is democratizing private equity for retail investors
“If you read the press release that we put out, we're starting in the OCIO. We're starting in the QP on the high net worth side, but our long run aspiration is to democratize this asset class.”
Vanguard private equity will outperform public equity by 200-500 basis points
“We feel confident that this private equity offer will outperform public equity, whether it's two, three, four, 500 basis points.”
Vanguard's active franchise outperformed nearly 90% of peers over 35 years
“And we've been really doing a good job over the last 35 plus years of evaluating and doing due diligence on these managers, which has resulted in Vanguard, its active franchise has outperformed close to 90% of our peers on the active side.”
Jain: There is no economic role for average active managers
“This is the only business where you don't need an average. Somebody needs an average phone. Somebody needs an average car. You do not need an average manager. Vanguard is happy to do it for you for two basements.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Seides: Proposed PE vs. S&P 500 Wager Found No Public-Side Counterparty
“At the end of the day, there wasn't anyone to take the public equity side of the bet. I reached out to some friends at Vanguard, but Vanguard isn't just a public equity index fund manager.”
Jack Bogle opposed automation at Vanguard due to high upfront costs
“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 rejected ETF inventor Nathan Most, calling ETFs speculative
“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…”
Traditional 1% RIA fees will prove unsustainable over the long run
“You can always get registered investment advisor, but at one percent of assets, it turns out to be a pretty significant cost. And although that's a business that has boomed, I think in the long run, it's going to turn out to be too costly relative to the value…”
Vanguard observes return persistence at the individual manager level in PE
“Most of the studies say, In LBO or in VC, what type of quartile regime switching do you have from first, second, third, fourth quartile, as opposed to just at the manager level? And at the individual manager level, we do see persistence.”
Vanguard estimates total value of financial advice at 300 basis points
“And we've quantified that value at somewhere around 300 basis points.”
Scale and elite managers give Vanguard an advantage in zero-sum markets
“And to think that Wellington and Bailey Gifford and Harbor Vest are not at a competitive advantage to retail investors, people doing this on their own, smaller active management shops, and then you combine that relative talent with what I would call reasonable…”
Vanguard secures sovereign-scale private equity terms for small investors
“Very much like they would price a sovereign wealth fund, and so we're able to take our thirty million clients at Vanguard and six trillion dollars, and without saying a word, the price comes in at a very reasonable level that we are now getting terms and condi…”
Ellis: Selecting Active Managers for Vanguard Is the Hardest Job in Asset Management
“And I personally think the hardest job that I know of in investment management Is to be the new guy who's taken on the responsibility on behalf of Vanguard to select active managers that you will now deploy funds with. That is going to be a terribly difficult …”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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 …”
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 …”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Sonnenshein: Grayscale is the PIMCO or Vanguard of digital currencies
“So Grayscale is the world's largest digital currency asset manager, and so Grayscale is to digital currencies, maybe what PIMCO is to bonds or Vanguard is to indices.”
Even top-performing active managers face three to five-year periods of underperformance
“Because even our active funds, which have done very, very well, go three and five years out of favor, as all active managers do.”
Vanguard active equity funds have generated 50 to 100 basis points alpha
“If you look at the alpha that's created on our equity side, It's ranged between 50 and a hundred basis points. We put all of our active funds together.”
Private credit's hybrid beta creates difficult portfolio asset allocation challenges
“When you start thinking about these hybrid asset classes that have a little equity beta, a little bond beta, it can really cause some challenges to your asset allocation process. Like, where would private credit or high yield sit? Do you break it and say it's …”
Most of Vanguard's fixed income assets are actively managed
“Most of our assets on fixed income are actively managed.”
Vanguard offers counter-cyclical, stabilizing capital to top private equity GPs
“We were very attractive to the top private equity because our cash flow will be contrarian and counter cyclical to their traditional cash flow model. So we are actually a stabilizing force for those private equity managers.”
Levine: Index managers cannot analyze company-specific performance across thousands of holdings
“If you're a Vanguard, you can't process that question for thousands of companies. You don't have Industry analysts for a lot of those, you know, classic index fund. And so you're thinking about much more general questions, like what is the structure of good co…”
Hynes: Vanguard's philosophy is low cost across active and passive, not just indexing
“If you listen to Vanguard and what their philosophy is, they're not a passive company. Their philosophy is to be a low cost, both on the active side and the passive side, and there's a place for both passive and a place for active.”
Batnick: Jack Bogle Once Started an Unsuccessful Technical Analysis Fund
“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.”
Ellis: Vanguard's Active Outperformance Is Driven by Low Negotiated Fees
“They are really good at it, but the real secret to success for Vanguard is that they've negotiated low fees on behalf of their investor clients, so they pass them on, and the low fees really, really matter.”
Active asset management is doomed in aggregate to underperform by its fees
“In aggregate, the industry is doomed to underperform by the extent of its fees.”
Comegys: Vanguard Manages Approximately $8.5 Trillion in Index Fund Assets
“We have about eight and a half trillion of index fund assets.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Mogelof: Six asset managers control over 85% of target date fund assets
“There are really six managers that dominate the market, probably have 85 plus percent of the assets. That's Vanguard, Fidelity, BlackRock, State Street, T. Rowe, and Capital Group.”
Active ETF Structures Defer Capital Gains Taxes for Fund Investors
“The brilliance of the ETF structure led by Vanguard is create a structure that we can own Microsoft. We don't, but we can own Microsoft and Toga. It can double. We could sell Microsoft and the owners of Toga won't pay the capital gains tax until they sell thei…”
Vanguard expected $150M for its first index fund but raised only $12M
“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…”