John C. Bogle Has Died
Bogle is remembered primarily for his role in launching index funds, but I think a more telling part of his legacy is the structure of Vanguard, the firm he started, now the world's most trustworthy (and among the very largest) investment firms.
Unlike most firms, Vanguard's funds own the firm, rather than the other way around. The funds are owned by Vanguard's customers, who transitively own the company. Vanguard "pays cost" for all the work its management and staff performs.
To illustrate how powerful this structure is, see Matt Levine's writing about "the fake moon landing of financial news stories": a claim by a former Vanguard insider that the savings accrued to the funds (and thus customers) as its result constitute billions of dollars of taxable income (under the IRS whistleblower rules, some percentage of those taxes would go to the insider!):
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-11-25/calper...
Bogle is a giant and a good guy in a field not packed full of good guys. RIP.
John Bogle created the index fund, and along with it a savings philosophy that enabled the average investor to build wealth by taking an appropriate amount of risk (with exposure to stock/bond markets) and minimizing fees.
The Bogleheads Wiki has great resources on topics related to savings, retirement and investing. Here are a couple entry points into what Bogle's method looks like:
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads®_investment_philo...
Freakonomics did a great podcast about index funds with him http://freakonomics.com/podcast/stupidest-money/
> Warren Buffett, the most famous investor in the world, had this to say recently: “If a statue is ever erected to honor the person who has done the most for American investors, the hands-down choice should be Jack Bogle.”
If you don't know who Bogle is, and don't know much about individual investing for retirement, I would recommend you read William Bernstein's If You Can, a (free!) little 16-page booklet that just lays out the "Bogle method" for simple investing for retirement.
The story behind Bogle founding Vanguard is one of my favorite business stories and one of my favorite examples of contrarian thinking.
https://www.inc.com/magazine/201210/eric-schurenberg/how-i-d...
I don't generally like the idea of having personal heroes, but John Bogle would be on the short list.
- Founded Vanguard and came up with the first index fund
- Became wealthy without exploiting his clients, foregoing millions, possibly billions
- Got a heart transplant at 65 and lived to 89
- Even in his recent interviews his voice always struck me as the voice of someone much younger, and he sounded very sharp mentally despite his age
RIP
I just finished reading "The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing", which opened my eyes up to how investing _really_ works -- turns out it's much simpler than I thought, which was an exciting realization to have. I'm sad to see him go.
RIP. One of the biggest reasons the investment class was able to expand to the common person. Exorbitant fees, lack of knowledge of investments were huge barriers of entry to making passive income. Only the really wealthy really had access to both. The index fund and the low fees associated with it are huge reasons why savings aren’t lower than they already are. Upper middle class especially benefited greatly.
Hard to fully apprehend the impact this guy had on investing for regular people. In a very real sense, imagine the aggregate savings in fees he created for millions of people over the course of decades -- savings that were likely plowed back into people's retirement and total returns. Who else has done something for investors like this? I can't think of anyone even close.
Having had the extreme pleasure, and honor to work with Mr. Bogle I am truly saddened by his passing. He was selfless to a fault, a great man.
He could've been a billionaire. Instead he made hundreds of thousands of us investors millionaires. Thank you, Jack! RIP
Bogle is the reason a lot of bad investing decisions are passively avoided.
RIP, Mr. Bogle. Does anyone know how Bogle concretely thought of the existence of samples like Warren Buffett who have outperformed the market over decades, granted the outperformance may not continue in the future [1]. I presume Bogle's view on this would be nuanced.
[1]: https://qz.com/1216260/warren-buffett-doesnt-beat-the-market...
He probably did more than anyone else to safeguard American's retirement.
Highly recommend listening to the bogleheads podcast ep 1 that interviews John Bogle. He turned out to be much more interesting than I thought:
https://s134.podbean.com/pb/2e4222a012edece84e321989ac0c4095...
As people are sharing resources related to John, the Freakonomics podcast, where John makes an appearance, on investing I found was informative as well.
Very sad. Millions of people will live comfortable, dignified retirements thanks to him. Mr. Bogle will be remembered as the Patron Saint of retirement investing.
I wish I learned about Index Funds when I was younger. Thanks, Jack! I'm a happy Vanguard customer holding a single Index Fund fund.
Due to his heart transplant, he was sometimes dubbed as the only man in Wall Street with a heart. Rest in peace.
A non-paywalled alternative story: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/14/jack-bogle-founder-of-vangua...
Reaching 89 seems pretty good for someone who had his "first of a half-dozen heart attacks at age 31" and got a heart transplant at 65.
"If a statue is ever erected to honor the person who has done the most for American investors, the hands down choice should be Jack Bogle," billionaire investor Warren Buffett wrote in his annual letter in March 2017.
Just yesterday I watched this video on YouTube interviewing him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrCo0m5gSfc
I found the clarity of his voice and the mental sharpness astonishing, given his age. Further, I wish information about index funds would be better explained in school.
Thank you Jack. Signed, Vanguard investor.
Anyone know why some sites are naming him as Jack Bogle while others use John Bogle?
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jack-bogle-index-fund-pioneer-a...
For those who want to hear Bogle's voice and a summary of his career in his own words check out this 2007 interview of EconTalk: http://www.econtalk.org/bogle-on-investing/
This being a coding community, has anyone ever created an ipython notebook or similar that uses historical data to see how these passive investing products perform over all possible long intervals?
I'm curious what are the conditions for doing well with passive investing depending on your buy/sell strategy and times? I suspect it can't just be a long enough interval of holding the indexes, it also depends on when you retire, or at what rate you buy indexes over your lifetime, or some other things that perhaps is just dependent on your life schedule and not really under your control. This is what some traders tell me, and I've never done the work myself to prove them wrong. How much chance is there in doing well with passive investing over a whole lifetime?
Very sad to see this.
Bogle spent a lot of time (and gave up the opportunity for a lot of money) preaching to people about how wealth can be accumulated. He really had a heart for helping people.
Watch some of his interviews on YouTube. He speaks very clearly, but it's easy to see he was a brilliant man.
Unless you're already a 'Boglehead': If you get ONE thing out of today's Hacker News, take an hour and learn the simple message John Bogle preached. Your future self will thank you profusely.
Truly a saint. His index funds and passive investing school of thought probably saved trillions of dollars and made investing in the markets accessible to millions of everyday citizens.
RIP.
I admire John a great deal and have been a lifelong, very happy Vanguard client. RIP.
It is quite possible that thanks to John millions of people today enjoy financially secure retirement. A huge VOO position (+some BRK.B) has certainly served me well as a volatility attenuator.
It is important to note that John Bogle or Vanguard did not invent ETFs. They popularized it.
The first rudimentary ETF was probably Toronto 35 Index Participation Units (TIPs 35) traded on Toronto Stock Exchange. The first fully mature ETF was State Street Global Investors's S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPDR). State Street company is still a major player in the ETF space today.
Why is there no black bar on the HN main page? I thought it was an algorithm that searched for the word “died”.
This is black-bar worthy — he did touch a lot of us with his work, and I’d like to think that he’s one of the few reasons the wealth generated in Silicon Valley largely stays to fund the next generation of startups (like mine). I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve recommended Vanguard personally.
Not sure how many HN people follow the Bogle philosophy, but to me it feels not inappropriate to turn on the black bar.
Wow. Thus passes a legend. Deserves the black bar IMHO, if you consider the debt owed to him by roboadvisors and such.
Bogle was certainly a visionary, though I always find it odd that he never got on the ETF bandwagon. They are the next logical step in his vision for finance.
Granted, they carry some risks that index funds don’t (liquidity and market risk), but they provide many advantages (like taxes). They also can be repurposed for any kind of investment vehicle as they essentially are just an “API.”
Jack Bogle is a legend and I have the majority of my money in Vanguard investment funds, but did you know that its corporate structure just might be a tax scam?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/your-money/vanguard-a-cha...
It sounds crazy at first, but after reading it's hard not to come away agreeing with the thesis.
From the Philly.com article:
> “Jack could have been a multibillionaire on a par with Gates and Buffett,” said William Bernstein, an Oregon investment manager and author of 12 books on finance and economic history. Instead, he turned his company into one owned by its mutual funds, and in turn their investors "that exists to provide its customers the lowest price. He basically chose to forgo an enormous fortune to do something right for millions of people. I don’t know any other story like it in American business history.”