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.
I don’t really follow tennis, but it turns out that an insulting label for tennis players connects to a very important investment idea. Read more »
In a post last month, I mentioned the skepticism we hear from time to time about Vanguard’s client-owned, at-cost structure.
In brief, under this novel structure the various Vanguard mutual funds own the operating company—The Vanguard Group, Inc.—that exists to serve those funds. No other owner pulls a profit from the operating company.
While listening to groups of investors recently as part of some research, we learned something that was, to us, a bit disappointing.
And thereby hangs a tale.
I am a pack rat.
A long habit of cutting articles from newspapers and magazines has left me with several boxes of clippings, only some of which have been sorted into files. On a clean-up crusade, I’ve spent more than a few hours going through the pile, looking to pluck only a few particularly interesting needles from the haystack.
Commentators almost seem to have been competing to coin the catchiest—or most negative—label for the ten years from the end of 1999 to the end of 2009. It’s not surprising that some have called it the “Decade from Hell,” given the 9/11 attacks, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, a deadly tsunami, the nastiness of domestic political discourse, soaring unemployment and federal budget deficits, etc.