Vanguard CEO Dismisses Long-Term Bear Market

Vanguard CEO John Brennan dismissed the ideas that stocks may be headed for a long-term bear market and that it's become a stock-picker's market, in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"If you go out now and look at 10-year results or 20-year results on the stock market, we're about where we should be. We're about normal," Brennan said. "We went through a wrenching bear market. We recovered nicely."

As to the strength of the economy, Brennan also is very optimistic: "The economy has been amazing. It absorbed the oil price shock and just kept on trucking. I think some of this is payback for a couple of decades of systematic improvement in the way corporations are run--their attention to financial returns, returns on capital, systematic application of technology."

Brennan also unequivocally dismissed the notion of a stock-picker's market, urging investors to remain faithful to mutual funds in a well-diversified portfolio. He also said he is strongly in favor of automatic enrollments in 401(k)s.

The staff of Money Management Executive ("MME") has prepared these capsule summaries based on reports published by the news sources to which they are attributed. Those news sources are not associated with MME, and have not prepared, sponsored, endorsed, or approved these summaries.

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