Recent posts by Craig Stock
Craig Stock heads Vanguard's Corporate Marketing and Communications department, responsible for delivering investor information and education in Vanguard’s "plain talk" style.
As you probably know, Bill McNabb, our chairman and chief executive officer, spent part of Monday, January 23, interacting with Vanguard clients via social media—”taking over” our Twitter and Facebook channels.
“It’s not every day that a CEO reaches out to their client-base. The information has been valuable,” wrote one fan.
“Why not get social every day?” another fan commented.
There’s a good reason why regulators require financial firms to include, when mentioning the past returns or ratings of a mutual fund, the warning: “Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.”
The warning is true. History is an imperfect guide to the future, or historians would be fabulously wealthy investment sages.
But history does seem, if not to repeat, to rhyme from time to time. Read more »
I’ve been investing in stocks through mutual funds for more than 30 years. I’ve known all along that periodic swoons come with the territory. I’ve experienced the October 1987 crash, the 2000–2002 bursting of the tech-stock bubble, and the kerflop of stocks accompanying the 2007–2009 credit crisis and “Great Recession.”
Even so, it’s never easy to see a fall in stocks slice into one’s retirement portfolio. But if getting older has an upside, it’s that experience has taught me some coping mechanisms.
In our own quiet way, we’re celebrating 35 years of indexing at Vanguard this year. (Hey, you wouldn’t expect party hats and champagne at Vanguard!)
Indexing is an amazing success story—and not just at Vanguard. From a controversial, much-derided idea back in 1976, index investing has grown to be a widely accepted investment approach today.
You may have noticed news coverage in recent weeks about reductions in expense ratios for some of Vanguard’s funds. Most recently, for example, we reported that expenses declined for several of our international index funds.
As one who long has advocated that investors focus on the costs of investing, I’m happy to see expense ratios get attention. Lower costs allow the investors who put up the capital and take the risks to keep more of the returns their assets earn.
But I have a quibble with one aspect of some reports I’ve seen: the implication that reduced expense ratios at some Vanguard funds amount to engaging in a “price war” with other firms.