A small startup named Wealthfront has created an innovation that could kill Vanguard, the company that popularized the index fund in the mid 1970s. Ever since, the investing world has never been the same. I saw a report that Vanguard had taken in more than 100% of the industry cash flow for 2016. That means that the ENTIRE mutual fund industry has fewer deposits this year in aggregate than Vanguard. That’s because customers are withdrawing their money out of high fee funds. Sitting atop trillions of assets under management, what does a behemouth like Vanguard have to fear? It’s called direct indexing. Continue reading “The Innovation that Could Kill Vanguard”