VTI tracks the total U.S. stock market - large caps are 69.8% of it

Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF, VTI, tracks the total U.S. investable stock market, as measured by the Morningstar Total Stock Market Index. The Index itself is a market-cap weighted basket of all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Currently, VTI holds 3,519 stocks. But as of Sept. 30th, 2026, some 36.1% of the fund's assets are concentrated in just ten companies;.up from 33.4% three months earlier. .

Just three stocks account for almost all of the increase in concentration: Between June 30 and Sept. 30, Microsoft’s weighting rose from 3.8% to 5.2% Nvidia’s rose from 6.4% to 7.1%, and Apple's rose from 5.9% to 6.6%. Together they added about 2.8 percentage points. Meta also gained, while Alphabet, Broadcom, Micron and Tesla slipped. Eli Lilly dropped out of the top 10, with chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices taking its place.

Ten companies were 36.1% of the fund

Vanguard's fact sheet for that date counted 3,519 stocks. The ten largest were 36.1% of assets, up from 33.4% on June 30. Nvidia was 7.1%, Apple 6.6% and Microsoft 5.2%.

Vanguard's fund page says the Morningstar US Total Market Index represents approximately 100% of the investable U.S. stock market, including large-, mid-, small- and micro-cap stocks. The index held 3,478 stocks. Every size band in the fund matched the index, including the 69.8% in large companies.

The fund samples that index. The April 28 summary prospectus, which a July 29 supplement left unchanged, says it holds a range of securities that, in the aggregate, approximates the full index in terms of key risk factors and other characteristics.

**Data note

The chart combines Alphabet's two share classes, GOOG and GOOGL. Combining both share classes, Alphabet is the fourth largest holding at 4.9%, down from 5.2% on June 30.” Chipmaker AMD is the tenth largest holding, currently representing 1.4% of assets. Adding the ten companies together results in a top ten holdings concentration of 36.1%

**VTI includes mid-, small, and micro-cap exposure

More broadly, even though VTI contains thousands of stocks, 69.8 percent of the fund's assets are comprised of large cap funds held within the S&P 500, as of Sept. 30.

VTI owns all the large cap stocks held in the S&P 500 and its index fund derivatives like SPY pluss thousands of mid-cap, small-cap and micro-cap stocks.

Historically, smaller stocks have been more sensitive to changing economic conditions, and tend to fall more in bad markets. VTI’s track record has played out accordingly: In each of the last three calendar years with stock market losses, VTI fell lost more than SPY: -37.0% to -36.8% in 2008, -5.2% to 4.6% in 2018 and -19.5% to -18.2% in 2022.

But the extra risk hasn’t brought VTI investors extra reward in recent rallies: VTI beat SPY in 2020, 21.1% to 18.3%, but trailed it in every up year since: 25.7% to 28.7% in 2021, 26.1% to 26.2% in 2023, 23.8% to 24.9% in 2024 and 17.1% to 17.7% in 2025. Over the 10 years through Oct. 2, 2026, VTI returned 14.8% a year, against 15.3% for SPY.”

Fees alone don't explain the difference in performance: VTI actually has lower fees than SPY, 0.03% per year compared to SPY's 0.09. Over the 10 years through Oct. 2, 2026, VTI returned 14.8% a year, against 15.3% for SPY.

The ETF is one class of a larger fund

VTI is one class of Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market Index Fund, which Vanguard also offers as a mutual fund. On Sept. 30 the ETF held $689.2 billion, less than a third of the $2,322.8 billion in the whole fund.

The shares started on May 24, 2001, and they trade on NYSE Arca. Over the 20 sessions through Oct. 21 they traded about $1.16 billion a day.

July renamed the index the fund already tracked

On July 29, 2026, the target index became the Morningstar US Total Market Index. It had been the CRSP US Total Market Index, from the Center for Research in Security Prices, or CRSP.

A July 29 supplement said Morningstar had announced its acquisition of CRSP and its indexes. Vanguard said on April 29 the name changes "will not affect the funds' investment objectives or how they are managed." Morningstar said on July 28 the rebrand "affects naming only" and that "index methodologies will remain unchanged."

The fact sheet measures the long record against a spliced benchmark, three indexes joined in sequence: the Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index through April 22, 2005, the MSCI US Broad Market Index through June 2, 2013, and this index after that. July retitled the index the fund has tracked since 2013.

The fund stayed within 0.01 percentage point of its benchmark

Through Sept. 30, the fund's net asset value return, with distributions reinvested, matched that spliced benchmark to the printed hundredth of a percentage point for the year to date and for one, five and ten years. The three-year average and the average since the shares began each ran 0.01 percentage point behind.

Year to date is cumulative. The other figures are average annual returns.

The expense ratio is 0.03%, the figure in the April 28 prospectus. The fact sheet says low expenses minimize net tracking error, and that the index is designed to deliver low turnover. The fund's turnover was 2.6% for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2025.

A wider market than the 2,500 largest

Schwab Asset Management's Schwab U.S. Broad Market ETF, SCHB, tracks the Dow Jones U.S. Broad Stock Market Index. Schwab's page calls the fund "simple access to the 2,500 largest publicly traded U.S. companies," and says the index measures large-, mid- and small-cap U.S. stocks.

Vanguard's index includes micro-caps. Vanguard's fund page says the index represents approximately 100% of the investable U.S. stock market. On Sept. 30 it held 3,478 stocks.