41–50 of 279 posts
Let's not forget that Vanguard has taken a strong stance against crypto [0]. Claiming to significantly invest in technology while deliberately ignoring the latest advancements in financial technology, seems contradictory. If their business was doing so well, they wouldn't have to lower fees. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42832026
Let's not forget that Vanguard has taken a strong stance against crypto [0]. Claiming to significantly invest in technology while deliberately ignoring the latest advancements in financial technology, seems contradictory. If their business was doing so well, they wouldn't have to lower fees. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42832026
cynically, crypto’s greatest achievement thus far has been speed running 200 years of financial mistakes and explaining why we need financial regulation.
Let's not forget that Vanguard has taken a strong stance against crypto [0]. Claiming to significantly invest in technology while deliberately ignoring the latest advancements in financial technology, seems contradictory. If their business was doing so well, they wouldn't have to lower fees. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42832026
Their business is doing so well that they can lower fees.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Front running is illegal.
In finance, nothing is illegal if the profits outweigh the fines. Citaldel paid handsomely for order-flow information from Robinhood. They made a lot of money off retail traders. They paid a fine IIRC equivalent to a few day's profits.
If you are curious about a brokers position on PFOF you can look up their disclosures. SEC Rule 605, 606 and 615 are the search terms you want when looking these up. Fidelity has a similar disclosure on this as Vsnguard, which is that they don’t engage in PFOF except for some options markets.
Robinhood got in trouble for false advertising about PFOF not because they engaged in it, because again, PFOF is not front running and not illegal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One other differentiation that Vanguard has is that it is owned by the fund holders “Vanguard set out in 1975 under a radical ownership structure. Our company is owned by its funds, which in turn are owned by Vanguard’s fund shareholders. We focus on meeting the investment needs of our clients.” So in short, vanguard is customer-owned, where fidelity is owned by mostly the founding family (the Johnson’s). https://cor…
But does that structure confer any realistic chance of voting control by any real humans who aren't already employed by vanguard? Funds aren't known for being voting activists.
Not mentioned in any of the coverage I've seen (or the interview with Vanguard's new CEO in the WSJ) is Fidelity. Fidelity used to be known for actively managed funds, but has been eating Vanguard's indexing lunch for the past 10 years or so. Part of this relates to its dominance in workplace accounts, but Vanguard hasn't helped itself with some bad customer-facing software updates and a perception that its service l…
We tried using vanguard. The UX/UI was so bad we went through the work of transferring everything to fidelity. They've got a pretty decent app. Vanguard has so much friction on what should be very simple and common tasks. There's no excuse for that. I can say pretty confidently that cutting fees won't be enough. They need a total rewrite of all their customer facing software and web stuff, and they probably need to r…
For 1, all of us software people have seen companies do this over and over, and it always sucks. For 2, why they couldn't do whatever backend migration they needed to do without having it disrupting retail customers, I have no idea.
Both of those point to a software organization way below where it needs to be competence-wise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBH, I trust vanguard more, even if their website is absolutely worse. There's a saying, 'if you're not the customer, you're the product'. I expect trades on those index funds are getting 'front run' much like robinhood is getting front run. You might have a lower ER but your nav might effectively be higher when buying and lower when selling. Of course, I'm a 'buy and hold' investor so this doesn't really effect me m…
How do you front run a mutual fund? The price is the price.
I put the word in quotes, because this is a perfectly legitimate way of front running. The major indices are all public, and anyone can take a crack at this. In other words, if I announce to the world a month in advance that on a specific day and a very specific time of the day (at the closing auction) I'm going to buy X amount of specific stocks and sell Y amount in other stocks, I can't blame people for using that information against me.
Let's not forget that Vanguard has taken a strong stance against crypto [0]. Claiming to significantly invest in technology while deliberately ignoring the latest advancements in financial technology, seems contradictory. If their business was doing so well, they wouldn't have to lower fees. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42832026
Vanguard funds are owned by the investors in those funds. The fees that they charge are to cover the expenses, not make profit for a private company. If they're doing so well that the fees are brining in more money than they need, they lower the fees so that their owners (the investors in the funds) don't have to pay as much in fees. Their business is doing so well that they can lower fees.
The counter to that is that they are not doing so well, that they need to attract more investors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Front running is illegal.
In finance, nothing is illegal if the profits outweigh the fines. Citaldel paid handsomely for order-flow information from Robinhood. They made a lot of money off retail traders. They paid a fine IIRC equivalent to a few day's profits.