Do you know who the biggest owners of Apple (AAPL) stock are? If you look it up, you will see that the top three are Vanguard, who owns 8.7%, Blackrock who owns 6.9%, and State Street who owns 3.5%.
Now look up Microsoft (MSFT) and you will see the same thing. The top 3 owners are Vanguard (9%), Blackrock (7.5%), and State Street (4%). Keep looking up big companies and you will see these names again and again.
Vanguard. Blackrock. State Street.
Vanguard. Blackrock. State Street.
Vanguard. Blackrock. State Street.
It’s like a broken record.
If you didn’t know any better, this would look a little fishy. How is it that these three companies own significant amounts of every publicly-traded company? Is this some sort of Iluminati-level cover up? Are they secretly running the world?
Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorists, the answer is “No.”
In this blog post, I will explain why Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street’s “ownership” of the stock market is not an elaborate scheme to control the world. However, I will also discuss why their ownership maybe still be concerning for other reasons.
To begin, let’s explain why Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street’s ownership of U.S. stocks is not the true definition of ownership.
Ownership is Not Ownership
As much as I would love to entertain notions of a Vanguard-Blackrock-State Street cabal, unfortunately, the truth is far less glamorous.
Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street show up as the biggest owners of nearly every public company because they offer ETFs and mutual funds which hold all of these underlying stocks. There’s no secret scheme, just aggregated ownership from their fund owners.
For example, when you buy VOO (Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF) in your retirement or brokerage account, Vanguard’s ownership percentage of every stock in the S&P 500 increases
