Vanguard创始人David Booth谈长期投资与3亿美元大学体育捐赠

Well, I don't know. Hopefully people feel more optimistic about investing, uh, in stocks and bonds over the long haul public markets. Um, and feel more confident that they can have a good long term investment experience. So that's um, it's really also for people like my parents, who never invested in public markets because they thought of themselves as outsiders. I thought that insiders made all the money. It would just take advantage of them.

And so that's kind of I think one of the the fascinating effects of all this academic research is it looks like the pros, uh, have a difficult time beating the market. So, uh, and you can buy the market very inexpensively. Now, a lot of different places, market index funds, market portfolios like we do. Yeah, whatever. So, uh, um, yeah, there's no, there's no there being an outsider. In other words, you don't seem to do about as well as the insiders.

That's a major breakthrough. That is. I want to ask you, as an outsider, I'm normally based in London, coming here to the US. I it's a more serious question. Are you concerned about the strength of U.S. institutions? I mean, we're we're looking at more activist treasury. They've been lots of questions about the fed, uh, and pressures, political pressures on the fed. What's your view on the strength of U.S. institutions right now?

Well, I think they're incredibly strong. I think the, uh, has reflected, you know, the markets in a quite a bit the last few years, really, since the, uh, since the pandemic hit in March of 2020. Mhm. Pretty much the last six years has been really, uh, great for the market. And it's also, uh, I don't know, something like seven quarters in a row we've had, you know, uh, uh gains in earnings. I mean it's uh, you know, I think a lot of people have a frustration maybe with the government or maybe, uh, any number of things causing stress.

But, um, there's not much evidence that, uh, people stress is correlated with stock and bond returns. I mean, you look at here again, we have 100 years of data stock and bond returns, starting with the Great Depression. You know, going through World War Two, you know, the, uh, pandemic, the high inflation paired to, uh, the Great Recession. Throughout all of that. Stocks are down about 10% a year and bond is about 4 or 5.

Um, so bond markets behave well with it. We hope they would. Yeah. So what I hope people get from that is, you know, you can trust by investing in stock and bond returns, you can trust you're going to get a fair, fair pricing. You have a fair chance. Now there's no guarantees. And you know, uh, markets do go up and down. But if you look at the last hundred years or I'll give you another story. My parents, who were never invested because they thought they were outsiders.

Um, when they passed away in 1985, I opened their safety deposit box and inside was $15,000 in cash. I mean, these are people that, uh, that was a huge part of what they had. Yeah. And had. So why write a book is for people like that. Had they known earlier on that the markets kind of work in your favor? The markets are working for you rather than you having to guess the market. Just to relax, stay calm. So you put half your money in the market having something like a money market fund or whatever.

Okay. Uh, hello. How are you? Probably going to be okay. Janet, line your question. Well, we're going to talk a little bit about college sports, and there is a stadium with your name on it at the University of Kansas. Yeah. Can you tell me about your first job there and what you're doing with the stadium now? Well, I've had a couple of jobs early on. My first, uh uh, I was in Boy Scouts and back in those days, uh, it's hard to believe now, but, you know, Boy Scouts, they asked you to usher people to their seats.

Uh, that was back in the good old days, I guess. So I got a job ushering people who were probably then the age I am now and helping them find their seats. Then a couple times, I sold popcorn. And back in those days, you would go up and down the steps, uh, you know, selling popcorn, and people would be yelling at you, get out of the way. Get out of the way! So that was very intimate experience with it's, uh, with the football stadium.

And tell me about your $300 million commitment, one of the largest in college athletics period, to change the stadium. Why do this? Well, um, college sports is incredibly important to, uh, in big state schools like Kansas or, uh, or whatever. You know, if you go to the University of Chicago as well. And sports were downplayed and it was great. Both situations are terrific. Um, but but sports is really important to Kansas.

And basketball has been sensational my whole, my whole lifetime. Um, the football team had fallen on kind of some tough times. They had one of the worst records, um, over a ten year period. And they needed to have something to get them jumpstarted. So they came up with the idea of a new football stadium. The old stadium was built just after World War one. And, um, so it's hard to go out and raise money when your team is doing so poorly.

But that's my hometown as well as where I went to, went to school. And so I, I wanted to make a big gift and help them, uh, get the program back in shape. And what do you think of all these changes in college sports, paying players, finding schools are looking to find new revenue sources to pay, players to hold different game. What do you think of it? Well, as a fan, I wish that didn't happen. Um, as an economist, I go, hey, these kids, a lot of them, this is their their only had a chance to make some pretty good money and afterwards because very few of them go pro.

So, uh, I'm sympathetic, uh, to the, uh, you know, to the players. I think eventually markets are being markets. Eventually, uh, there'll be kind of an equilibrium, you know, that comes out and all of this. My guess is it'll be different than we, uh, the configuration we have now, there will probably be maybe a Super league of, of of rich schools that are spending a ton of money on sports. And that might be one conference, and then there'll be maybe some other layers, uh, because schools are going to have to live within their means.