Money & markets
The Index Fund Revolution
11 min
Jack Bogle's unglamorous idea — just buy the whole market cheaply — quietly outperformed most professional stock pickers and moved trillions. Explore how passive investing works and how it reshaped finance.
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Show notes
The first index fund launch in nineteen seventy-six raised only eleven million of its one hundred fifty million goal.
Active investing functions as a zero-sum game where high expense ratios act as a drag on long-term performance.
Twenty percent of United States mutual funds disappear every five years due to survivor bias and poor performance.
The Vanguard Effect pressured the entire financial industry to lower investment fees for everyday retail investors.
A ten thousand dollar investment in the first index fund would have grown to nearly two million dollars today.
Modern indexing has expanded to include over six thousand seven hundred distinct global benchmarks for investors.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Birth of Bogle's Folly2 min
- 3The Brutal Math of Active Management3 min
- 4The Vanguard Effect and Market Transformation3 min
- 5The Modern Indexing Ecosystem2 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- 50 years. 50 facts. Indexing since 1976. | Vanguard
- Vanguard | Acquired
- Episode 688: Brilliant Vs. Boring : Planet Money : NPR
- Episode 400: The Evolution of Index Fund Investing — Rational Reminder
- The Papers that Changed Investing: The Case for an Unmanaged Investment Company | Index Fund Advisors, Inc.
- The Professor, the Student, and the Index Fund
- Tune Out the Noise - Birth of Index Funds | Index Fund Advisors, Inc.
- Birth of the Index Mutual Fund: ‘Bogle’s Folly’ Turns 40 – Jason Zweig
- 104: Okay, But What Even Is an Index Fund?
- Why Jack Bogle mattered so much to the investing world - CNBC
- The First Index Mutual Fund
- 40 years after his "folly," Bogle's index funds reign | AP News
- As The Index Fund Moves from Heresy to Dogma . . . What More Do We Need To Know?
- Vanguard Turns 40!
- Acceptance Remarks
- The Professor, the Student, and the Index Fund
- Vanguard’s history | Vanguard
- “The Chief Cornerstone”
- 50 years 50 facts Indexing since 1976
- Vanguard—Child of Princeton
- As The Index Fund Moves from Heresy to Dogma . . . What More Do We Need To Know?
- The Vanguard Story: “Luck, Leadership, and Strategy”
- A look back at the life of Vanguard’s founder | Vanguard
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