Vanguard founder Jack Bogle and his diehard online investment community, the Bogleheads, were chosen as MONEY Heroes for their steadfast commitment to spreading investment advice that preaches simple, low-cost, diversified investing.
Preaching the gospel of simple investing
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Jack Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group
Why he's a hero: Bogle, 82, has both preached the benefits of low-cost funds and indexing and made them widely available. He's a fierce critic of the financial industry's habit of putting its own interests ahead of its customers'.
His current passion: Raising an alarm over what he sees as the newest threat to prudent investing -- exchange-traded funds. First lauded for enabling people to hold broad stock indexes inexpensively, ETFs have morphed into vehicles for short-term speculation in narrow market slices. "ETFs are a prime example of Wall Street doing the wrong thing with a good idea," Bogle says. "The simple index fund has become a vehicle for lunatic trading."
Quote: "One of the most powerful rules in finance is reversion to the mean. If a sector of the market is outperforming, you can be sure that at some point it will collapse. The good stuff just can't continue."
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