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Not parent, but I wouldn't use these funds because there's a fundamental conflict of interest. Fidelity is a private company that seeks to profit from its custo
by whitepoplar 8y ago
Not parent, but I wouldn't use these funds because there's a fundamental conflict of interest. Fidelity is a private company that seeks to profit from its customers. Vanguard is a company owned by its customers.
What happens in the future if passive indexing falls out of favor, there's an exodus out of index funds, and Fidelity jacks up fees? If you're investing in a taxable account, you'd (presumably) incur a capital gain to leave the fund. At Vanguard, expenses may increase, but they won't seek to profit off of you. In a tax-advantaged account, I suppose the Fidelity funds are fine.
I'm curious to hear tanderson92's answer, though.
- scarface74 8y agoNot parent, but I wouldn't use these funds because there's a fundamental conflict of interest. Fidelity is a private company that seeks to profit from its customers. Vanguard is a company owned by its customers There is always a profit motive. The company itself may be customer owned but the employees are still trying to make money. I’m not saying that it’s wrong. It just is.
- tanderson92 8y agoIt is true, but I think it's reasonable to suspect that principal-agent problems are less of a concern when you have non-collaborating individuals trying to extract money from an institution which doesn't structurally have a principal-agent problem than in the situation where the corporation itself poses a principal-agent problem with respect to its customers.
- whitepoplar 8y agoTrue! Case in point: Vanguard's advisory services and their actively managed funds.