John Bogle

American investor who founded Vanguard in 1974 and created the first index fund available to individual investors — demonstrating through decades of data that low-cost passive investing outperforms the vast majority of actively managed funds after fees.

Proved that the enemy of the individual investor is not stupidity but cost — that by eliminating the management fee, the index fund investor outperforms most active managers over any 20-year period — and institutionalized this insight in the Vanguard cooperative structure where investors own the fund company.