• CNBC on Bogle's passing (1/16/2019)
• Morningstar Remembering Jack Bogle (1/19/2019)
• Bogle interviews with The Motley Fool

1. Bogleheads On Investing Podcast Episode 1: Jack Bogle with host Rick Ferri (68 minutes)
2. Jeremy Siegel and Burton Malkiel discuss the legacy of John Bogle (27 minutes)
3. Leslie Norton @ Barron's summarizes Bogle's Last interview (13 minutes)
4. Masters in Business: Jack Bogle with Barry Ritholtz
5. Chuck Jaffe's tribute to Bogle (69 minutes)

I was working on the final draft of this book when Jack Bogle passed away on January 16, 2019, at the age of 89. I only had the pleasure of meeting him once, but he had an enormous impact on me. Scores of individuals in the financial press and social media wrote public tributes to Bogle following the news of his passing (see this partial list), yet it seems difficult to do justice to Bogle because his influence has been so profound on the investment industry. Some of the terms used to describe Bogle that I've seen have included gentleman, entrepreneur, innovator, giant, titan, legend, centurion, hero, and saint.

Bogle is usually credited for creating the first index mutual fund, but his impact was immense in multiple ways beyond that pioneering creation. Vanguard was not the only firm introducing and promoting index funds, in fact, my former bosses were involved in some of the initial attempts to develop funds that would effectively match the market, rather than try to beat it. Some firms now offer index funds for free (at a loss, expecting to make up the losses through other means). See for instance, Cheapest Index Fund Providers via riabiz.com.

Jack Bogle created a unique structure at Vanguard whereby the fund manager is owned by its fund shareholders, rather than by insiders or stockholders. As a result, Vanguard’s interests are aligned with the shareholders and rather than maximize revenues or profit, fees are set to match the costs of running the funds, and the organization. When revenue exceeds costs, Vanguard cuts the fees (something they have done hundreds of times). The unique structure that Bogle created at Vanguard forced the industry to be even more competitive. Laurence Siegel noted in 2018 that Vanguard had reached a 25% market share of long-term mutual fund assets. No firm had ever been over 15% before (Massachusetts Investors, Investors Diversified Services, and Fidelity all got 15% market share). Of the 50 largest fund companies, Vanguard is the only one mutually owned (something Bogle actually considered a failure, according to Allan Roth).

A third major innovation by Bogle was Vanguard's decision to go no-load in 1977. Vanguard summarized "Mr. Bogle and Vanguard again broke from industry tradition in 1977, when Vanguard ceased to market its funds through brokers and instead offered them directly to investors. The company eliminated sales charges and became a pure no-load mutual fund complex—a move that would save shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars in sales commissions."

Another impressive achievement is the fact that Vanguard has had such high customer service rankings. Vanguard historically ranks at or among the top of customer service surveys (despite occasional glitches). Vanguard's hybrid Robo-Advisor "Personal Advisor Services" claimed the top position in Backend Benchmarking's first edition of The Robo Ranking. Bogle described Vanguard's hybrid Robo-Advisor as "robo-plus" in a late 2018 interview, several weeks after having a pacemaker implanted in his transplanted heart.

Customer satisfaction is, of course, related to performance and the performance of Vanguard's funds speaks for itself. Whether you look at all funds, money market funds, stock, bond, or balanced funds, over the long run, Vanguard's funds tend to outperform roughly 90% of the time. 86% of Vanguard's funds beat their peer-group averages over the five-years, and 94% surpassed their peer-group averages over the ten-year period ended December 31, 2017 (Source & 3Q2018 data)

Bogle's remarkable list of accomplishments includes the following.

• Over 64000 registered users at Bogleheads.org, the forum of Bogle followers
• He sold over one million books (riabiz)
• Vanguard reportedly has over 20 million clients (Siegel)
• Vanguard manages over $5 trillion in assets

I have no idea whether the Nobel committee ever considered Bogle for the Nobel Prize (by rule they do not consider the award posthumously). I would certainly give him credit for being the most important and impactful person in the history of investing. Bogle made it possible for tens of millions of investors to live more peaceful financial lives. Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson is credited with the idea of the index fund and he ranked Bogle's index fund "invention along with the invention of the wheel, the alphabet, Gutenberg printing, and wine and cheese."

In 1995 Tyler Mathisen wrote in Money Magazine in an article titled "BOGLE WINS: INDEX FUNDS SHOULD BE THE CORE OF MOST PORTFOLIOS TODAY" that "Indexing should form the core of most investors' fund portfolios." For most investors in public securities, Vanguard's index funds are a good default. There are other index fund providers and assets that Vanguard that does not offer directly through funds, but given Vanguard's structure and history, it should be the first choice. All other firms and funds need to have a strong enough advantage to justify getting ahead of Vanguard in the pecking order. That's not to say there aren't other good firms and investing options (in fact, I use others in addition to Vanguard). It's just rational to start with Vanguard and only use others if there are compelling reasons.

The question of whether too much money is chasing stock market anomalies or risk factors like value investing (as I discussed in chapters 20-24) at any given time is a very legitimate concern. Others ask whether index investing has become too popular. Given the marginal costs of active investing and the argument that most active investing is speculative rather than investment oriented, I think more investors and money should be indexed than less. But the fewer the number of active investors and the lower the turnover from active investors, the less liquid markets can become and the more volatile markets can be.

Estimates of the percentage of investment funds that are indexed vary depending on the date and metric, but the trend toward indexing that Bogle initiated is continuing. Index fund assets under management have grown from near zero in the 1980s to about 30% of registered fund assets globally in 2017 according to a January 2018 Vanguard release (Source). In 1997, I posted a commentary titled The Magic Number about the significant of Vanguard's index fund becoming the largest in the country. I updated an online scorecard through 2000 when the Vanguard index fund outgrew the Fidelity Magellan fund to take the title of largest mutual fund. By the end of 2018, Vanguard not only managed the largest mutual fund, they managed the three largest U.S. stock and three largest U.S. bond funds.

Barron's noted in May of 2018, that index funds accounted for 43% of all stock fund assets, and were expected to reach 50% in the next three years. In total, there were almost $7 trillion in U.S. funds that don’t use active managers. The Wall Street Journal noted in 2018 that active mutual funds accounted for 92% of U.S. stock funds in 1997, but that had fallen to 56% and Bloomberg reported in early 2019 that according Morningstar, large cap equity index funds already had more assets than large cap active equity funds as of the end of 2018.

Calvin Coolidge said “After all, the chief business of the American people is business." U.S. investors depend on the success of America's business to generate returns on their investments. While many have won Nobel and other prizes for academic and other advancements, no one has had the tangible impact on America's investment business like Jack Bogle. Occupy Wall Street and many commentators have argued that Wall Street and investment professionals make too much money, and there is some validity to those arguments. What we know for sure, is that the financial industry would have made a lot more money, and millions of investors would have less, if it weren't for Jack Bogle.