3 ms·

Their AUM was $56bn in 1990. https://about.vanguard.com/img_files/who-we-are/remarkable-history/WWA_VAUM.png https://about.vanguard.com/img_files/who-we-are/re

by kgwgk 8y ago

Their AUM was $56bn in 1990. https://about.vanguard.com/img_files/who-we-are/remarkable-history/WWA_VAUM.png https://about.vanguard.com/img_files/who-we-are/remarkable-h... I guess one can debate how "common" is "common". Maybe indexing was common in the late eighties, but now it's two orders of magnitude more common.

perl4ever 8y ago
Something can be common without being a large percentage, or a majority, of the market. When Vanguard's fund had $11 million and was the first and only of its kind, I think it's fair to say indexing was not common or popular. When they had competitors and there were billions of dollars being indexed (keeping in mind a billion dollars used to be worth more than now), I think it's reasonable to say investing in index funds was growing common. By analogy, a small percentage of the national or global population used the internet circa 1996, but it was becoming a common activity in the sense that millions were discovering it.