Manager Ownership

Updated on September 17, 2025

Being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which (they) watch over their own.
– Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776

When I analyze mutual funds, my first question is simple: Are the managers “eating their own cooking?”

Are they putting their own money in the strategies they oversee, or must we trust they’ll look out for our interests without sharing our risks?

You’d be forgiven if you thought finding an answer would be easy. It is not. But don’t worry, I’ve done the legwork for you.

Vanguard is required to disclose manager fund ownership only once a year, and the information trickles out piecemeal as fund prospectuses are renewed across a mix of fiscal year-ends. Worse, ownership is disclosed in seven broad buckets:

• $0
• $1–$10,000
• $10,001–$50,000
• $50,001–$100,000
• $100,001–$500,000
• $500,001–$1,000,000
• over $1 million

I have collected the data in the following table so you’ll know whether the paid managers of your investment dollars have a vested stake in a given fund’s success.

This table lists all of Vanguard’s actively managed funds as well as any index funds where a manager owns shares. At the end of the table, I list all of the index funds (and ETFs) with no manager ownership.