Fifty years ago today, the Vanguard Group launched the First Index Investment Trust, now the Vanguard 500, which manages an astonishing $1.7tn. The launch was an infamously terrible, horrible, no good, very bad debacle. CEO Jack Bogle had predicted $150mn in assets, but underwriters — including major investment banks — could only raise $30mn after a disappointing roadshow, insufficient to buy all S&P 500 stocks.

The idea faced deep skepticism. Financial theories from the universities of Chicago, Stanford, and Boston failed to resonate with advisers in Des Moines or Dallas. Despite endorsements from Paul Samuelson in Newsweek and a favorable Fortune article, the fund struggled for years.

Bogle's persistence was driven partly by corporate politics. After being sacked as Wellington's CEO in 1974, he secured a subsidiary role barred from investment management. He argued an index fund was "unmanaged," exploiting a loophole. While Wells Fargo, Batterymarch, and American National Bank of Chicago had already launched index funds for institutions, Vanguard's mutual fund wrapper for ordinary investors eventually revolutionized the industry, though its importance to the already-revving passive phenomenon is often overstated.