The passing of John Bogle recently breezed through the public’s scant attention span. Sad. Bogle was a national hero. He was a fiduciary. A fiduciary is someone who takes some control of resources on behalf of another person. In modern legal terms, the emphasis is that the fiduciary makes decisions that are best for the owner, rather than best for the fiduciary’s personal interests. Legislation is occasionally considered that would require financial advisors to “act as fiduciaries” for their clients. In practice, that means they should always act for the benefit of their clients, not their own interest. For example, when choosing between a low-cost mutual fund and a higher-cost fund that offers to send the advisor on a nice vacation, they should choose the lower cost fund. It’s a tough standard. It’s such a tough standard it can be hard to think of real-life examples in any field. Even financial advisors need to look out for themselves. They’ve got families to feed, right? Would
My blog with editorials about anything.