Father of the index fund, a revolutionary who fought for the ordinary investor
An American investor, founder of the Vanguard Group, "father of the index fund." He did something against the industry’s unwritten rules: since the great majority of active fund managers cannot beat the market over the long run yet charge high fees, why not simply build a fund that merely "replicates the whole market index" and charges almost no management fee, letting ordinary investors passively share in economic growth at rock-bottom cost? His first index fund in 1976 was mocked as "Bogle’s folly," yet passive index investing is now the mainstream, managing tens of trillions of dollars. He opposed Wall Street’s high fees and short-term speculation all his life, hailed as "the man who saved ordinary investors the most money."
Bogle’s insight was plain and subversive: rather than laboring to pick the few stocks that beat the market (the needle in the haystack), simply buy the whole market (the haystack itself). Since over the long run almost no one can consistently beat the market, own the market itself at the lowest possible cost. This "silly idea," mocked by peers in its day, finally set off an investing revolution that benefited billions of ordinary people.
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