The real scandal in the mutual fund industry, says John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group, are the fees funds charge. Bogle, who has long criticized the industry, told Bloomberg News that “mutual fund investors have paid a far greater penalty for grossly excessive management fees and fund operating costs and marketing costs.”
“We’ve let the investor down in a great bull market,” says Bogle, who notes that in the past two decades stock funds returned an average of only 10% while the stock market had annual returns of 13%.