John C. Bogle
There is no country like the United States, with its diversified industrial base, technology leadership, innovation and strong pressure to build companies to make them grow.Collection: Technology
New ideas that fly in the face of conventional wisdom of the day are always greeted with doubt and scorn, even fear.Collection: Wisdom
My grandfather was a wealthy and respected merchant in Montclair, New Jersey, where I was born. But his estate was wiped out in the Great Depression, and as a result, I had what I consider the ideal upbringing: We were a proud family, good citizens, and we didn't have a sou.Collection: Great
My father's money vanished in the Great Depression, and he had trouble keeping a job.Collection: Great
The driving force of any profession includes not only the special knowledge, skills and standards that it demands, but the duty to serve responsibly, selflessly and wisely, and to establish an inherently ethical relationship between professionals and society.Collection: Relationship
While the interests of the business are served by the aphorism 'Don't just stand there. Do something!' the interests of investors are served by an approach that is its diametrical opposite: 'Don't do something. Just stand there!'Collection: Business
Well, bitcoin is a currency. Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return. You know, bonds have an interest coupon. Stocks have earnings and dividends. Gold has nothing, and bitcoin has nothing. There is nothing to support the bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to somebody for more than you paid for it.Collection: Hope
The stock market is a giant distraction from the business of investing.Collection: Business
If you were to just design the perfect retirement plan, you would own the stock market or you would own the bond market. You would get all the costs or all that you possibly could out of the system. So on an annual basis, if the market went up 8 percent, you would get 7.8 or 7.9 percent.Collection: Design
We do some things for family reasons. If it's not consistent, well, life isn't always consistent.Collection: Family
The index fund always gives you the market return.
I would advise someone who has just retired to be something in the broad range of 50/50 stocks and bonds.
Vanguard never would have happened if I hadn't been fired as CEO of Wellington Management Company, the firm that did the investing for the Wellington fund and eight sister funds.
My only regret about money is that I don't have more to give away.
Working for company X and having a substantial portion of your retirement plan in company X is simply exposing yourself to too much risk, because the company is both your employer and the source of your retirement income. So if something goes wrong, you lose both your job and your retirement plan.
The long-term focus of index funds is a much needed counterweight to the short-termism favored by so many market participants.
If the job of capitalism is to create wealth for those who put up the capital, no fund group comes close to Vanguard's success in serving its owners. So we're probably as far away from communism as is realistically possible.
I learned you work for what you get, and I feel sorry for people who haven't had that upbringing.
They were tough times and I started working when I was 10 years old, delivering papers and eventually becoming a waiter.
I tend to give to those who have helped me along the road of life: Blair Academy, Princeton University, our church, and several hospitals that got me here in one piece. On the community side, I've always been a big supporter of the United Way.
I don't like going into stores, I don't like the whole process of buying things.
At the beginning of my sophomore year at Princeton University, I took my first economics course; our textbook was the first edition of Samuelson's 'Economics: An Introductory Analysis.'
We must work to establish a 'fiduciary society,' where manager/agents entrusted with managing other people's money are required - by federal statute - to place front and center the interests of the owners they are duty-bound to serve.
The malfeasance and misjudgments by our corporate, financial and government leaders, declining ethical standards, and the failure of our new agency society reflect a failure of capitalism.
We have moved from treating funds as investment trusts designed to serve their owner-beneficiaries to treating funds as consumer products, designed to attract the largest possible assets. This new approach has ill-served the interests of fund shareholders.
My incentive in starting Vanguard, I'm very blunt about this, it was my means of preserving my career. That's a very selfish thing.
U.S. companies are innovative and entrepreneurial.
In my long experience, one thing I know is that truth is elusive.
I seek the truth.
Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. It is a high-risk, high-reward proposition.
While we would typically encourage young people to start saving for the future as early as possible, it's unlikely that a budding entrepreneur will be able to do so. The entrepreneur will need every bit of capital available for the business, which will likely crowd out personal savings.
With actively managed funds, people have big behavior problems. With funds that have done well, they put their money in, and when it has done bad, they want to take it out.
Glen Weyl is a good friend of mine.
I think high turnover is definitively the investor's enemy, so you don't want to bring a high-turnover philosophy to this business. You want to have a long-term philosophy.
I would always advise young people to follow their star - not my star. They have to live their own life. If they decide they want to go into the investment business, do it, but make it a better business than it is today.
It occurs to me that, after the huge output of writing I've produced over the years, there is a close link between my twin careers as investment executive and financial writer: The power of the word and the power of the book have played a major role in turning my vision... into reality.
It is the power of words and books - explaining and dramatizing great ideas and articulating high ideals - that is the greatest weapon in the missionary's arsenal.
The Vanguard Experiment was designed to prove that mutual funds could operate independently, and do so in a manner that would directly benefit their shareholders.
Every winter my wife and I take a week off and go to a resort in Florida.
The best rule for philanthropy is to give until it hurts, as much as you can, because none of us can get through life all by ourselves.
If we wanted something, we had to earn it.
Entrepreneurs or international conglomerateurs, or large financial institutions buy or create mutual fund management companies to create a return on their own capital. It's capitalism at work, where the rewards tend to go to the managers rather than the investors.
When you're young, you've got plenty of time to recover from your mistakes.
I liked the so-called Volcker Rule. I would have separated investment banking and commercial, deposit banking, as we did under the Glass-Steagal Act. I would have brought back Glass-Steagal.
My favourite holdings are Vanguard's Wellington Fund, a balanced mutual fund which is a legacy investment from my first career at Wellington Management Co., and the Vanguard 500 Index Fund.
The average hedge fund manager is going to earn zero per cent in extra return.
I don't see any magic in hedge funds.
I almost hate to say how proud I am of my career and, most of all, helping folks get the returns they deserve.
I was never the type who had a particular ambition. I had friends in college who would say, 'I want to be a vice president by the time I'm 35 years old.' A lot of people had these career plans. I didn't have any. I thought if I did my best, good things would happen.
Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack.