A Wall Street legend quietly gave up 1 billion dollars.

Let's start with a number: A person changed the entire industry's business model, saving American retail investors 1 trillion dollars. This person is not some mysterious tycoon; his name is Jack Bogle, who recently passed away.

What did he do? In 1976, he founded the first index fund, which was mocked as “Bogle's Folly” at the time, with a fundraising target of 150 million USD but only raised 11 million. Now, this fund has become the largest mutual fund in the world.

The key is his company structure: Vanguard is not a publicly traded company, but is owned by the funds it manages – when you buy one of its funds, you become a part-owner of the company. This means there is no shareholder pressure to maximize profits; the company only needs to cover its costs. The result? Ridiculously low fees.

Data speaks:

• Vanguard now manages 5 trillion USD, the second largest asset management company in the world.
• Saved investors $175 billion just through a low-cost model.
• Plus the “Vanguard effect” (which triggered a reduction in fees across the entire industry), saving a total of 1 trillion.

The most ironic thing is — he could have become a billionaire. The founder of Fidelity's family is worth tens of billions, but Bogle's Vanguard is larger in scale, yet he only has a net worth of 10 to 30 million. This is because he deliberately chose a different structure.

There is a saying that summarizes him: he could be as rich as Gates and Buffett, but he chose to give this wealth back to millions of retail investors. No wonder Warren Buffett said, “No one has made a greater contribution to American investors than Jack.”