Vanguard Doesn’t Care About Your Trade War

Every morning, we run The Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories in financial media. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But for whatever reason these are articles that are representative of some sort of chord that has been struck in Narrative-world.


China’s Ant Financial, Vanguard form Shanghai-based venture: government records    [Reuters]

“Even though no one knows specifically what they’re going to do, I think it stands to reason that Vanguard will bring their expertise in running passive portfolios and Ant will bring their expertise in placement and distribution,” he added.

Vanguard isn’t waiting around for a Chinese trade “deal”.

Vanguard isn’t clutching their pearls about Chinese IP “theft”.

No, Vanguard is going to do what they always do … they’re going to obliterate their competition with the pricing power that comes from collaboration with every government’s intense desire to transform active capital markets into a passive political utility.

Vanguard is the Killer Rabbit. And yes, there’s an Epsilon Theory note about that.


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