Is anyone surprised that Bloomberg has reported that Vanguard is now the biggest mutual fund company by assets managed? The firm has finally surpassed Fidelity Investments, which has held the title since 1988.

You can spin this several ways. Many will call this the triumph of the passive approach over the active approach, low-cost indexes over stock pickers, the Vanguard 500 over the Magellan Fund. Others will call it the triumph of good marketing and a winning business and ownership model. Some might be tempted to call it a victory for John Bogle over Ned Johnson. But it remains to be seen just how profound this shift is.

It does seem like the public has wised to the ways of the fund industry. Average consumers don't seem as awed by mutual fund managers and stock analysts. One way to deal with the many ways the deck is stacked against them, is to get out of the game, so to speak. Investors took a net $301 billion out of actively run equity funds in the U.S. from the start of 2008 through August, according to Morningstar, while stock-index funds attracted $113 billion.

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