John C. Bogle

John Clifton "Jack" Bogle was an American investor, business magnate, and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive of The Vanguard Group and is credited with creating the index fund. An avid investor and money manager himself, he preached investment over speculation, long-term patience over short-term action, and reducing broker fees as much as possible.

The ideal investment vehicle for Bogle was a low-cost index fund held over a lifetime with dividends reinvested and purchased with dollar cost averaging. His 1999 book Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor became a bestseller and is considered a classic within the investment community.

After graduating from Princeton, Bogle sought a position in banking or investments. Hired by Morgan at the Wellington Fund, Bogle was promoted to assistant manager in 1955, at which time he was able to analyze the company and its investment department. Bogle persuaded the Wellington management to change its strategy of concentrating on a single fund and creating a new fund.

Eventually, he succeeded, and the new fund became a turning point in his career. After successfully climbing through the ranks, Bogle replaced Morgan as chairman of Wellington in 1970 but was later fired for an "extremely unwise" merger that he had approved. It was a poor decision which he later considered his biggest mistake, stating, "The great thing about that mistake, which was shameful and inexcusable and a reflection of immaturity and confidence beyond what the facts justified, was that I learned a lot."

In 1974, Bogle founded The Vanguard Group, which is now one of the most respected and successful companies in the investment world. In 1999, Fortune magazine named Bogle as "one of the four investment giants of the twentieth century."

In 1976, influenced by the works of Paul Samuelson, Bogle created the First Index Investment Trust (a precursor to the Vanguard 500 Index Fund) as the first index mutual fund available to the general public. It was not immediately well received by individuals or the investment industry but is now lauded by investment legend Warren Buffett, among others. In a 2005 speech, Samuelson ranked "this Bogle invention along with the invention of the wheel, the alphabet, Gutenberg printing."

Bogle suffered heart issues in the 1990s, subsequently relinquishing his role as Vanguard CEO in 1996. His successor was John J. Brennan, his handpicked successor, and second-in-command, whom he had hired in 1982. Bogle, who was then 66 and "considered past the age for a healthy heart transplant," had a successful heart transplant in 1996.

His subsequent return to Vanguard with the title of senior chairman led to conflict between Bogle and Brennan. Bogle left the company in 1999 and moved to Bogle Financial Markets Research Center, a small research institute not directly connected to Vanguard but located on the Vanguard campus.

During his high-earning years at Vanguard, he regularly gave half his salary to charity, including Blair Academy and Princeton. In 2016, the Bogle Fellowship was established at Princeton University by John C. Bogle Jr, Bogle's son. The fellowship sponsors 20 first-year students in each class.