I Love Jack Bogle
Posted By Randy Jones on March 16, 2009
Amid all the economic chaos that is swirling around our great land, the financial equivalent of 9/11, I find myself looking for voices of reason and sanity. Even with a four-day market rally last week, housing starts are still at an all-time low and unemployment is raging toward the 10 percent level not seen since 1982. So now more than ever, Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard and the creator of the popular Vanguard 500 Index Fund, is a voice we should all give our undivided attention. Mr. Bogle founded the Vanguard 500 Index Fund in 1975 as the first index mutual fund and quickly became the king of low-cost index investing, which has benefited millions of American investors. He felt then, and he still believes today, that we mere mortals (even RMITs) can’t predict the movement of the stock market with any degree of accuracy. Even the professionals can’t do it. In 2008, 80 percent of mutual fund managers did not beat the market. Bogle believes that active management strategies (meaning stock jocks choosing stocks for the investor) lose because they are so bloody expensive. They may enrich the money manager, but not the investor. Passive indexing strategies like the S&P 500 Index funds outperform because they are cheap. It’s that simple. Wall Street firms create new products to enrich themselves, as we saw with credit default swaps. I have yet to find anyone who can, in understandable language, define what they are. Wikipedia defines a CDS as a credit derivative contract between two counterparties. The buyer makes periodic payments (the so-called premium leg) to the seller, and in return receives a payoff (the protection or default leg) if an underlying financial instrument defaults. Make sense? I didn’t think so. The lesson? Bogle is right. The best investments are most often the simplest. To understand, that is. Maybe you should index your way to being the richest man (or woman) in town.
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