Overview
- Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF VOO has passed $1 trillion in assets, reflecting heavy, fee-driven inflows into a small set of large U.S. companies that now dominate passive allocations.
- The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF VTI holds about 3,494 stocks and has a slight year-to-date performance edge over VOO in 2026, offering broader exposure to small- and mid-cap U.S. companies.
- Vanguard’s VXUS has outperformed iShares’ developed-markets IEFA on year-to-date and multi-year bases as its roughly 8,700 non-U.S. holdings, including about 27% in emerging markets, boosted returns versus IEFA’s ~2,600 developed-market-only stocks.
- Vanguard’s VOO and iShares’ IVV track the same S&P 500 index with identical 0.03% expense ratios and near-matching returns, with the main differences being VOO’s larger asset base and IVV’s longer track record.
- For investors, the takeaways are practical: low fees make these ETFs efficient building blocks, but choices about total-market versus S&P 500 and developed-only versus developed-plus-emerging exposure meaningfully change sector, size, and country risk in a portfolio.