TO: Veterans and Principals
FROM: John C. Bogle
DATE: April 1, 2015
RE: Bloomberg Markets Article
This story from the April 2015 issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine features some speculation about who might be able to fill the empty chair you see on the first page of the attachment when I’m gone. The article’s title asks the question, “Is There a Next Jack Bogle?” Based on the authors’ extensive interview with me, they conclude, “Not if You Ask Jack Bogle.” (In fact, all I said was, “I think it’s crystal clear that nobody, nobody, plunges into this battle to build a better industry with any more enthusiasm than I do.”)
My potential successors apparently include our CEO Bill McNabb; BlackRock’s head of iShares Mark Weidman; “Smart Beta” pioneer Rob Arnott of Research Affiliates; my son John C. Bogle, Jr. of Bogle Investment Management, hedge fund manager Cliff Asness of AQR; University of Pennsylvania professor Jeremy Siegel of “smart beta” firm WisdomTree Investments; and Andrew Lo of MIT, developer of the “Adaptive Markets Hypothesis.”
The article seems to focus on whether or not these potential successors—often with new indexing methodologies—can continue to drive indexing forward. But, along with Bill Sharpe and other respected academics,[1] I believe that traditional market-cap-weighted broad-market indexes (S&P 500 and the Total U.S. Stock Market) will endure long after most—if not all—of these other strategies have been abandoned.
I wish that the authors of the article had focused more on who might continue my passionate investor advocacy—including my efforts to establish a standard of fiduciary duty for all money managers. But we rarely get what we wish for…
Best,
Jack
[1] To say nothing of Warren Buffett, who put his reputation and his so-far-winning wager on outpacing a particular hedge fund (and his wife’s estate!) on the line with his confidence in our Vanguard 500 Index Fund. His recent endorsement of my Little Book of Common Sense Investing, by the way, has served to increase sales in recent weeks from about 240 per week (pretty good for a book published more than eight years ago) to 750 per week, an increase of more than 200%.