John C. Bogle - Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor

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• The Aggressive Conservative Investor by Martin J. Whitman and Martin Shubik
• Supermoney by Adam Smith
• Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor by John C. Bogle
• John Bogle on Investing: The First 50 Years by John C. Bogle

John C. Bogle

Cover design: Wiley

Copyright 2015 by John C. Bogle. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
A Dell Trade Paperback edition was published by Dell Publishing 1994.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN: 978-1-119-08833-2 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-119-10956-3 (ePDF)
ISBN: 978-1-119-10957-0 (ePub)

To my parents, for setting my values.

To my brothers, for their sacrifices.

To Eve, my beloved wife, for her devotion, patience, and support.

To my children, for their understanding and pride.

The very existence of Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor depended largely on some remarkable persistence, first by Amy Hollands, then senior editor for Irwin Professional Publishing (later part of McGraw-Hill Publishing). Amy stopped in at my Valley Forge office in November 1990 and told me that Irwin was eager to publish a book aimed at helping mutual fund investors achieve their financial goals. Based on her numerous high-level contacts around the financial community, she reported that almost every person with whom she discussed the need for a solid book on mutual funds had suggested that I should be the author.

Thanks Amy, but maybe later, I told her. For at that time I was quite overwhelmed with the task of building Vanguardthe fund complex that I had founded in 1974, beginning with some $1.4 billion of investor assetsand managing the explosive growth that would carry our assets to more than $100 billion by 1993. At that time, we had just begun to emerge as an industry leader, and cash flow from net investments by shareholders had been growing at an amazing 20% annual rate for a decade. I'd love to do it. And I know that I can do it, I told her, but right now I can't possibly find the time to write a book.

So, Amy came back a year later with the same plea. And then again a year after that. When she dropped by in the spring of 1992, however, my schedule had eased (a bit!). At the same time, the serious heart problems that I had been plagued with since 1960, alleviated by the care of my fabulous cardiologist Dr. Bernard Lown, began to return. While I'm generally not much of a worrier, I did begin to wonder about how much time I had remaining on this earth.

So, I told Amy, Maybe it's now or never. I'll write the book. I began the task on Labor Day 1992, seated at the desk in my den at our family retreat in the Adirondacks. I wrote the preface, and the outline of my work fell quickly into place: