Mr. Bogle was 89 years old.
In 1976 Mr. Bogle, founder of what is now known as The Vanguard Group, started "First Index Investment Trust," the first mutual fund that bought the entire stock market in proportionate shares. To that point every investment house and adviser posed as a witch of Wall Street, able to pick individual or groups of stocks that would outperform the market as a whole. Forget picking stocks, John Bogle was saying. Which...fell on the witches deaf ears.
Over fifty years later about forty percent of all mutual funds are index funds. John Bogle's idea revolutionized investing. 1970 Nobel Economics laureate Paul Samuelson said in a speech in 2005, "I rank this Bogle invention along with the invention of the wheel, the alphabet, Gutenberg printing, and wine and cheese: a mutual fund that never made Bogle rich, but elevated the long-term returns of the mutual-fund owners - something new under the Sun."
In 1976 Mr. Bogle, founder of what is now known as The Vanguard Group, started "First Index Investment Trust," the first mutual fund that bought the entire stock market in proportionate shares. To that point every investment house and adviser posed as a witch of Wall Street, able to pick individual or groups of stocks that would outperform the market as a whole. Forget picking stocks, John Bogle was saying. Which...fell on the witches deaf ears.
Over fifty years later about forty percent of all mutual funds are index funds. John Bogle's idea revolutionized investing. 1970 Nobel Economics laureate Paul Samuelson said in a speech in 2005, "I rank this Bogle invention along with the invention of the wheel, the alphabet, Gutenberg printing, and wine and cheese: a mutual fund that never made Bogle rich, but elevated the long-term returns of the mutual-fund owners - something new under the Sun."
