Vanguard

Vanguard Group (Vanguard) is one of the famous investment companies in the world because it has the lowest fees. In other words, it is investor [Page 1659]friendly, because of the philosophy of its outspoken founder John Bogle, who is well-known in financial circles for his passionate advocacy of the irrelevance of financial analysts, and because of the implications of the academic theory of the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) that markets for stocks and bonds follow a “random walk”; in other words, it is impossible for financial analysis to “beat the market,” which implies that financial analysts need not be paid their customary fees, which, traditionally, have been a 5-percent load plus 2 percent per year in expenses. Thus, Vanguard is famous for no-load and low-cost ...