Talk:The Vanguard Group

message: Hello. This article has some external links but it was unclear where and if they are the sources for the article. So I added a "noreferences" tag. OK from my point of view to change or remove the tag. Best wishes. -Susanlesch 02:43, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: :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)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Vanguard logo.gif

message: 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)
thread_title: Rewording

message: 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)
replies: text: - 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)
thread_title:  Is it privately held?  Or a mutual company? 

message: 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:
# 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.
# 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.
# 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)
thread_title:  Criticism Section 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Addition of Criticism section (July, 2020) 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Largest provider of mutual funds