Acquired
03:34:47 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:34:47] S0: ownership via loss leaders. [03:34:49] S1: Yes. Yes. The Vanguard effect, Would Fidelity, would BlackRock, would State Street be charging the low low fees that they are today on their index products? Were it not for Jack Bogle and Vanguard, I don't think so. [03:35:05] S0: It's interesting. I wonder where it would have settled, because there would have been competition around pricing. And the way it usually works is you compete down to the minimum profit that firms are willing to make. Yep. So I wonder what that sort of floor would have been if not for Vanguard. [03:35:23] S1: Right. But usually, that minimum profit that firms are willing to make is not [03:35:28] S0: zero. Zero. Especially not in this industry. Very true. [03:35:35] S1: So, yeah, I think, I I agree with Warren, and millions and millions and millions of people have had their financial lives changed because of him and would not have happened without him. [03:35:46] S0: Yep. Alright. Alright. I've got two bits of trivia for you. [03:35:49] S1: Oh, okay. Great. Flame on me. [03:35:51] S0: Vanguard opened their doors on 05/01/1975. Yep. What other company started that same month? [03:35:59] S1: Oh, [03:36:01] S0: Microsoft. Microsoft. [03:36:02] S1: Yeah. Nicely [03:36:04] S0: done. That crazy [03:36:06] S1: that history. Thing [03:36:07] S0: At the same, you know, time that Bill Gates is toiling away in Albuquerque, you've got Bogle and crew amidst that crazy board fight all the way across the country in Pennsylvania.
03:36:07 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:36:07] S0: At the same, you know, time that Bill Gates is toiling away in Albuquerque, you've got Bogle and crew amidst that crazy board fight all the way across the country in Pennsylvania. [03:36:21] S1: And, we didn't put this in the narrative, but the initial founding headquarters location of Vanguard Valley Forge. Not Philadelphia, not Malvern, but nearby Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, cradle of independence in the American Revolution. [03:36:38] S0: That's right. [03:36:39] S1: Right up the street from where I grew up. Spent many an afternoon as a child walking around that park. Little did I know what was going on there.
03:36:39 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:36:39] S1: Right up the street from where I grew up. Spent many an afternoon as a child walking around that park. Little did I know what was going on there. [03:36:48] S0: Alright. So my second piece of trivia is something truly astonishing that is related to this episode, but didn't make the narrative. Arvin from Worldly Partners sent over this crazy piece of research to David and I. David, don't know if you looked at it, about the entire set of companies that have 100 x ed since going public. Because he's on this quest to figure out, was it knowable at time of IPO, how well they would do? And this basket of companies, on average, delivered a 533 x since going public. Wow. So, like, really good companies. On average, they saw drawdowns at some point in their life of 65% and took eight years to recover to get to their prior all time highs. Wow. So think Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, TSMC, Nike. And I bring this up because most investors just do not have the temperament or the research capacity to decide to continue to hold these assets. So it just doesn't make sense for most people to put material chunks of their net worth in them. I I don't think I realized that even for that whole basket of 100 Xers, the average drawdowns that they saw was 65%. Like, if if your goal is to invest in the world's greatest companies and hold for a long time, you are required to go through massive, massive downturns that could take on average eight years to return to the all time highs. Who does that?
03:36:48 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:36:48] S0: Alright. So my second piece of trivia is something truly astonishing that is related to this episode, but didn't make the narrative. Arvin from Worldly Partners sent over this crazy piece of research to David and I. David, don't know if you looked at it, about the entire set of companies that have 100 x ed since going public. Because he's on this quest to figure out, was it knowable at time of IPO, how well they would do? And this basket of companies, on average, delivered a 533 x since going public. Wow. So, like, really good companies. On average, they saw drawdowns at some point in their life of 65% and took eight years to recover to get to their prior all time highs. Wow. So think Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, TSMC, Nike. And I bring this up because most investors just do not have the temperament or the research capacity to decide to continue to hold these assets. So it just doesn't make sense for most people to put material chunks of their net worth in them. I I don't think I realized that even for that whole basket of 100 Xers, the average drawdowns that they saw was 65%. Like, if if your goal is to invest in the world's greatest companies and hold for a long time, you are required to go through massive, massive downturns that could take on average eight years to return to the all time highs. Who does that? [03:38:20] S1: Well, there's two groups of people who do that. People with absolute iron stomachs and index fund holders. Right. So there you go.
03:38:20 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:38:20] S1: Well, there's two groups of people who do that. People with absolute iron stomachs and index fund holders. Right. So there you go. [03:38:30] S0: And the people with iron stomachs, they might be right. They might be wrong. Like, there's high conviction wrong people much more often than high conviction right people. And so that's, you know, why there really is only one Berkshire Hathaway. [03:38:41] S1: Yep. Yep. Wow. That's incredible. [03:38:45] S0: Yeah. It's crazy stat. [03:38:46] S1: Well, similar to that, I have a really fun thing that I learned in the research. So Jack, as we talked about, was a prolific author. I think he wrote 12 books, I wanna say, in his lifetime. Yeah. And those books continue to sell really well. All the proceeds from the book sales all go directly to the Bogle Family Foundation where they get distributed to a whole variety of charities, including prominently the American Indian College Fund, which I think Jack was on the board of and was a huge supporter of during his life. So what another cool legacy that all of the proceeds just flow directly into charities. [03:39:28] S0: Pretty cool. The world's largest philanthropist. Yes. But not from the book sales. [03:39:33] S1: Not from the book sales. No. No.
03:39:33 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:39:33] S1: Not from the book sales. No. No. [03:39:35] S0: Alright. On to carve outs. The first one is many of you will notice that we started writing in the Wall Street Journal. So we are very, very pumped about that. If you wanna read our article on Ferrari, you can do that by clicking the link in the show notes. Also, on Vanguard, we just did one two days before this episode came out that came out in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. [03:39:56] S1: Yeah. This is, a, super cool, and b, what a fun full circle moment for me. Earlier in my career, I worked at the journal on the business side, not as a writer. Like, the idea that someday I and we would have a regular column in the journal would have blown my 24 year old mind. [03:40:15] S0: So listeners, if you are not subscribed to the journal and you would like to read our columns, you can go sign up at acquired.fm/wsj, and we will get you sent special links that are free for you to read because we want this to be accessible to every Acquired listener. Yeah. Super cool. Even if you already have a Wall Street Journal subscription, sign up at acquired.fm/wsj if you just wanna be notified when we do have a new piece so you don't miss it. That's acquired.fm/wsj. Okay. My real carve out is I am recording this episode on a brand new MacBook Pro m five Max. Yeah. You went all out. I clicked the biggest [03:40:56] S1: spec possible. The max button.