17 Jan JACK BOGLE 8TH MAY 1929 – 16TH JANUARY 2019
I didn’t hear about Vanguard founder Jack Bogle’s death yesterday via a BBC news flash. The BBC is keen to pump ‘news’ of no real significance to me on a regular basis but seems to have completely missed the significance of what Bogle achieved during his lifetime.
Even this morning, a Google search reveals that the Financial Times is the only UK daily newspaper headlining his death (although their daily morning email to me makes no mention of it at all). It’s not even featured on the Home page of the BBC News website this morning – although the story of a woman being mauled to death by her pet crocodile is.
I learned of Bogle’s passing at about 11:00 last night (GMT+1) from what has become my go-to source of reliable news – Finance Twitter.
Finance Twitter is a very broad church with its ‘members’ representing every investment philosophy you could think of, from day traders to buy and hold passive investors. Yet the community was united in offering its respect to this titan of a man, someone whom most investors have never heard of, yet he is the one man who arguably more than anyone else revolutionised investing for the ‘ordinary’ investor.
He could have been a billionaire many times over but chose a different path – to build a non-profit business which benefitted the investors in its funds, not him.
The guys over at Collaborative Fund summed up what many of us are thinking this morning:
“The amount of (justified) praise Jack Bogle is getting is a reminder that when this is all over no one will care how much money you made but everyone will remember how much good you did and how many people you helped.”
You can read his full obituary here. I recommend you do. It shows the true measure of the man.
Carolyn