Rule no. 9 – Character Counts

CHARACTER COUNTS - MUTUAL FUNDS

A few months ago, I wrote a post on 8 rules to build your mutual fund portfolio. These 8 rules are laid down by John C Bogle, the renowned founder of the Vanguard group, in his book “Common Sense on Mutual Funds”. These rules apply to those who would want to select non-index, actively managed funds.

The 8 rules to build a mutual fund portfolio are:

  1. Select low cost funds
  2. Consider carefully the added costs of advice
  3. Do not overrate past fund performance
  4. Use past performance to determine consistency and risk
  5. Beware of stars
  6. Beware of Asset Size
  7. Don’t own too many funds
  8. Buy your fund portfolio and hold it

In the post, I had mentioned about one more rule which I had promised to share on a future date. Here it is.

Rule #9 – Character Counts.

Bogle wrote a book called “Character Counts“, which contains 25 of his speeches that he gave at Vanguard. They are an insight into how Vanguard was built to grow into the largest ‘no-load’ mutual fund group in the world.

Let’s understand why character counts in selecting your mutual funds.

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