Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…The well-known SPDR, Standard & Poor's Depository Receipts Trust, which is the listing for State Street'S&P 500 ETF, which until recently, like a year or two ago, was the largest ETF in the world until it was surpassed by Vanguard and BlackRock, after Jack's time. Well, after Jack's time. So yeah, this was a really bad decision by Jack to pass on ETFs. Today, ETFs are a huge part of the mutual fund industry. They are still only about half the assets in aggregate of traditional mutual funds, but ETFs are growing at like 30% per year while mutual funds are flat. So if that keeps up, at some point here in the next small set of years, ETF assets will pass traditional mutual funds to become the largest equity asset class in the world. Yep. So listeners, why does this matter? Why are we explaining the difference between ETFs and mutual funds here on Acquired? I think the most interesting reason is that it was the thing where it was clear that the founder really should hand over the reins. This should not have been a sticking point. This should not have been even a decision for the company. This was clearly the right thing to do long-term. And whether or not you understand the mechanics of a mutual fund versus an ETF, and we dramatically oversimplified and skipped some things, it is just so perfectly illustrative of this point. Vanguard had to get into ETFs. Yeah.…

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