Talk:The Vanguard Group

NPOV Dispute
Can someone substantiate the claim this article "is written like an advertisement"? For the most part, the content seems quite factual with few POV statements. If no one can provide multiple specific instances of POV language, I will remove the tag within a week. Rtcpenguin 19:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think that Vanguard funds are awesome, safe investment choices for nearly everyone. But there are no negative or opposing points of view in this article! I think Vanguard is great, so I am not the right person to write about the negative aspects.


 * Also, there is a ridiculous lack of references in this article. There aren't even sufficient references to corroborate some of the claims, not even on Vanguard's own website! Which isn't the appropriate place to source an encyclopedic article to begin with. I am trying to address some of this, as I am repeatedly referred to this Wikipedia article by people regarding the supposedly mutualized nature of Vanguard as a company, despite the fact that Vanguard itself doesn't make such claims, not explicitly. --FeralOink (talk) 09:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, also, the NPOV tag was probably removed at least five years earlier. I am not taking it upon myself to replace it, though I won't argue with anyone who might chose to do so. --FeralOink (talk) 09:31, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

"Empirical evidence for the Efficient market hypothesis."
I have removed the sentence

"This is empirical evidence for the Efficient market hypothesis."

since it is untrue.

I do not doubt the accuracy of the empirical evidence. However, the fact that 75% of fund managers are unable to "beat the market" does not logically entail the truth of the efficient market hypothesis. All it suggests is that 75% of fund managers are unable to "beat the market". This could be for any number of reasons, inter alia, they are incompetent, they do not have access to full information, EMH is true, etc., etc.

Soobrickay 21:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Another user added back an similar sentiment, without an edit summary, and still uncited:
 * ''These findings are consistent with the Efficient market hypothesis.
 * So I followed your example and removed it. After all, these are not findings of cause and effect, merely observations based on hindsight.  It could mean simply that fund managers have the same valuation of stocks as retail investors and pension funds. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 23:19, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Vanguard logo.gif
Image:Vanguard logo.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 02:32, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Rewording
I've reworded the opening sentences of the History section to address what I think are inaccuracies. I don't have time to track down citations now, so if you really think it's necessary slap "citation needed" but please don't revert back to an inaccurate wording.

First, you can't invest directly in an index. Not then, and not now, and this disclaimer usually appears in so many words in the prospectus and descriptive marketing material of any index fund. The first Vanguard index fund didn't even invest in all 500 S&P stocks, and even today "total market" index funds use sampling techniques.

Second, John C. Bogle and his colleagues did not invent the index fund or create the first index fund. What he created was the first index fund sold to individual investors. Index funds were relatively new at the time, to be sure. They were institutional products available only to pension funds. Bogle was an innovator, not an inventor. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Is it privately held? Or a mutual company?
The lead section says that Vanguard is structured as a mutual company and owned by its customers, but the infobox says it's a privately held company. Not sure which is correct, although I did get here from the mutual company article.  AgnosticAphid  talk 03:58, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * - I have updated this with a new source that explains that it has never been mutually owned in a legal sense, but only in a general sense in that it is owned by its customers - it is however technically a privately held company.Pontificalibus 10:49, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Criticism Section
As of 2018-12-26, the two criticisms of The Vanguard Group do not make sense. The first criticism is that Vanguard holds "...$6.2 billion dollars worth of shares and bonds in coal companies as of December 2018 despite the environmental damage coal does due to climate change.". The second criticism is "Vanguard also has $103.3 billion dollars invested in weapon stocks. Supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia in their conflict with Yemen." This second criticism is made without citation. These criticisms are not relevant to The Vanguard Group for the following reasons:
 * 1) Most Vanguard funds are designed specifically to avoid picking specific stocks.  Most Vanguard funds are index funds which aim to distribute holdings according to a preset rule.  Any broad-based index fund will inevitably include coal companies as long as coal plays a part in the economy.  The same argument is true for weapons companies.
 * 2) The primary role of Vanguard is to facilitate its clients to invest in indexes.  The responsibility of investing in coal companies ultimately lies with the individual investors, not necessarily Vanguard.  It could be argued that Vanguard should allow its users to choose certain companies to avoid investing in.  However, the responsibility would still lie with Vanguard's clients to demanded that this option be made available.  If Vanguard denied this option to its clients, it would be logical to criticize Vanguard for that.  However, if such a situation occurred, it would be likely that a different holding company would spring up to satisfy these specific desires and replace Vanguard at least in part.
 * 3) One of Vanguard's most popular index funds is VTSAX, which is currently structured to hold some 3600 companies.  These companies are picked based on strictly quantitative measures, not whether or not the companies align with investor's political views.  The vast majority of large corporations are included in this index fund.  Therefore, if somebody dislikes any U.S. corporation, they are almost guaranteed to find it on the VTSAX index.

Is it reasonable to hold Vanguard accountable for the actions of the all U.S. companies? I don't believe it is.

It would be reasonable to criticize the structure of Vanguard and its funds. However, it is absurd to hold Vanguard accountable for every individual company in which its funds have holdings.

I can sympathize with the environmental and humanitarian concerns regarding coal and war, but this article is not relevant to either topic.

Summary: Because of the above reasoning, I am removing the criticism section - it contains no valuable content.

Venture To The Stars (talk) 08:24, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Addition of Criticism section (July, 2020)
I recently attempted to create a Criticism section and add some information to it. However, the change was reverted by JesseRafe and it was suggested to discuss this in the Talk section. I would have liked to add the text/links in other sections of the Vanguard's page, but it didn't fit well anywhere, so had created a new Criticism section. Here are the changes that were made: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Vanguard_Group&oldid=969567987. If anyone would like to give some input that would be great. Otherwise, I will attempt to re-add this, since it includes some references which I feel are important to document on Wikipedia. - Thanks. JimmyDean1011 (talk) 01:27, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for following the request and posting here. I'm going to respond only in one place, not on both pages. As you noted on my talk page, I noted in my edit summary that you seem motivated to include these facts to "document them on Wikipedia" which seems like you have an agenda to "expose" something about Vanguard rather than "improve the encyclopedia". I would recommend spending some time on the links I left on your user talk page and reading up on how Wikipedia operates, maybe even try to improve a few other articles you may not have such a vested agenda in. As you may discover when reading about WP we also have a guideline called WP:BRD, and after a conversation on the content is started, if you decide to re-add it pending consensus, that might be seen as edit-warring. I'd also ask you to be patient, because as a big as a financial entity Vanguard is, I don't think this page has many watchers, so you might have to wait some time for full-fledged conversation to develop. You can get a sense of the activity from the page history and moreover this talk page history. JesseRafe (talk) 12:20, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello! I may be misunderstanding the reasons for this deletion by User:JesseRafe but the suggested criticisms provided by User:JimmyDean1011 look like they could be a good addition to the article. The criticisms they listed (common ownership, and lack of owner transparency) are specific to Vanguard unlike the criticism section from 2018, which looks to have just listed criticisms of mutual funds in general. I think it could be a valuable section for readers of the Vanguard article but if I'm misunderstanding editor policies please let me know. Thanks, Its choosday innit (talk) 19:30, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * It was removed for its tone and being poorly written such as the random background info and plain facts phrased as "criticism", and given that it was a new editor (or new account) and insisted on not changing any of this info, WP:TNT was followed because it seemed the intent was to criticize Vanguard more than improve the encyclopedia. A better written and better source criticism can be added. JesseRafe (talk) 13:34, 4 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Got it; I'll see if I can find sufficient sources to add a criticism section (WP:BALASPS). If there's enough I'll start drafting a criticism section and post it here. Its choosday innit (talk) 22:31, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Largest provider of mutual funds
The first paragraph states "It is the largest provider of mutual funds and the second-largest provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the world after BlackRock's iShares." I'm not sure this is still accurate. According to Investopedia, Vanguard is actually second-largest for mutual funds, after BlackRocks as of Q3 2019. The source in this article seems to only be for the ETF portion of that statement and is from 2017. Is Investopedia reliable for quoting this information? I noticed the Investopedia article actually pulls directly from BlackRocks' & Vanguard's reports, which can be used to compare the two, but not sure if this is enough to state they are the largest above others. Anyone else have thoughts around this? BuickaSoka (talk) 22:29, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Neutrality of lead section
, I'm aware that you opened a sockpuppet investigation into me that was proven false because I consider Gothamist to be basically a left wing version of Breitbart. So, I'm trying to WP:AGF but struggling given that fact. Also, the edit which you "undo" entirely, has a broken link among the two presented. Beyond that, the link that does work says that 'we show that there is a real prospect that index funds will continue to grow, and  that  voting  in  most  significant  public  companies  will  come  to  be dominated by the future “Giant Three.” ' To say that they currently dominate corporate America is WP:SYN. Discuss here before making your blanket revert. Sucker for All (talk) 21:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I did not open a sockpuppet investigation against you. JesseRafe did, and I provided supporting commentary. It has not been "proven false" as you claim. The SPI is ongoing, but I believe Bbb23 could comment on this better than I. (However, this isn't really the place for any of this. You should really move this grievance elsewhere.)
 * You originally reverted language that existed, saying "academic papers not sufficient for a current business. this isn't about a historical topic." That is utterly untrue. Your penchant for undoing good-faith edits without consensus or grounding in an understanding of Wikipedia policies is not going unnoticed. Shoestringnomad (talk) 21:31, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * OK! These are facts: 1. You restored a broken link many many times and 2. The language of the actual quoted paper is "a real prospect that will continue to grow .." not "this happened" therefore you have major promises with restoring a broken link and creating a synthesis that doesn't follow the source. While it may be true I don't consider the source particularly reliable, even if you do, you cannot claim the source says something that it doesn't. Sucker for All (talk) 15:22, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Why do you keep saying a broken link is added when your change is reverted? Both links work and support the statement. This is not a question of WP:SYN as you keep saying. What exactly do you take issue with in the language you keep removing? I'm baffled but your insistence to remove language that is supported by the sources. Shoestringnomad (talk) 15:53, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The language of the actual quoted paper is "a real prospect that will continue to grow .." not "this happened". Therefore you have major promises with restoring a broken link and creating a WP:SYN that doesn't follow the source. Links work with certain os' some of the time. At a point in time, one of the links was down. It would make sense to preserve it with web.archive if you believe a scholarly article about a potential future that never happened should be preserved. Sucker for All (talk) 16:29, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? The section you keep removing in the article is "Along with BlackRock and State Street, Vanguard is considered one of the Big Three index funds that dominate corporate America." That's it. And that is quite summarily described using the sources. So why do you bring up "a real prospect that will continue to grow"?? Shoestringnomad (talk) 16:33, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * You should re-read the sources you quote. "we show that there is a real prospect that index funds will continue to grow, and that voting in most significant public companies will come to be dominated" is the language. The way you wanted the article to be written is WP:SYN Sucker for All (talk) 17:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear. You're saying that the sentence ""Along with BlackRock and State Street, Vanguard is considered one of the Big Three index funds that dominate corporate America." is not supported by the sources? Is that what you are actually saying? Shoestringnomad (talk) 17:14, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. That's the exact thing I'm saying. Are you going to continue to have an argument with me about the contents of a source without actually quoting that source? Sucker for All (talk) 18:27, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks. New source added. Shoestringnomad (talk) 18:41, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

This is completely spurious, bad faith argument, that fails on its face. The paper in question unambigously cites these three as "The Big Three" in its title, in the first sentence of the abstract and throughout. It's the subject of the paper. Your nonsense about Gothamist and Breitbart about wholly unrelated subjects demonstrates your inability to understand Wikipedia's rules and guidelines, both about content and conduct. Self-revert, or expect to see the issue escalated. JesseRafe (talk) 19:28, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The sources quoted unambiguously say "we show that there is a real prospect that index funds will continue to grow, and that voting in most significant public companies will come to be dominated", not that they are dominant. An aside on "importance" from bloomberg definitely does not mean the article should have that intro as written Sucker for All (talk) 08:01, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Why remove reference to corporate America? Source I added cited above states "The Big Three—BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street—are the most important players in corporate America." Please respond why you insist on removing reference to corporate America. Thanks. Shoestringnomad (talk) 03:57, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * One BLoomberg article written like an ad doesn't mean much. No one on Fox Business or CNBC ever talks about these index funds. Furthermore, unless someone says otherwise, I am going to add a "this article reads like an advertisement". Supposedly $8T are under management because of an FT ad. Index and mutual funds? Who have they invested in? Who are the partners they work with? Mutual funds are a collection of stocks, and yet not a single stock is written about that has been heavily invested with vanguard. Index funds and mutual funds invest in companies. Which companies has Vanguard invested in? Which are part of the "8T" in holdings?? Sucker for All (talk) 02:46, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * https://theconversation.com/these-three-firms-own-corporate-america-77072 Just search "Big Three" and "corporate America," will ya? Also, you can't just say "article written like an ad." Bloomberg allows sponsored content but labels any as such. This is not written like an ad. Again, you change your defense, and this is why I don't like discussing an issue with you. Shoestringnomad (talk) 02:51, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Here's another source, saying "big three" "own corporate America": https://www.businessinsider.com/american-corporation-big-three-firms-2017-5 Shoestringnomad (talk) 03:39, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * That was 2017. I'm guessing TikTok doesn't exist according to your source. And by the way you posted the same source twice. Reverted according to explanation. I think NPOV might be a better tag than refimprove, although this article's clearly written like an advertisement too. Messy article Sucker for All (talk) 20:09, 17 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I think the following articles (among others available) substantiate that Big Three dominate corporate America:, , , , . I personally don't see any reason that the wiki article should continue to have a tag at the top. I'm going to remove it. Softlavender (talk) 03:30, 26 October 2021 (UTC)