John Bogle

John Bogle founded Vanguard in 1974 and launched the first index fund available to retail investors in 1975 — the Vanguard First Index Investment Trust, later known as the Vanguard 500 Index Fund. Initially ridiculed as "Bogle's Folly" by the industry, index investing has since grown to represent trillions of dollars in assets. Bogle argued relentlessly that active management as a whole cannot outperform the market after costs, and that low-cost index funds were the rational choice for most investors. His mutual ownership structure for Vanguard meant that profits returned to investors as lower costs. He wrote several books, spoke widely, and advocated for investor rights until his death in 2019. He is widely considered one of the most consequential figures in the history of personal finance.