GWX vs VSS

GWXAState Street SPDR S&P International Small Cap ETF

VSSAVanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap ETF

In short

GWX A 2007-vintage way to own the small stuff overseas: about 2,100 developed-market companies, filtered by a hard USD 2 billion size ceiling written right into the index name.

VSS One ticker for the small companies the rest of the world runs on: roughly 4,800 stocks across developed and emerging markets outside the US, at 0.06% a year. Vanguard has run it since 2009.

Stated mandate

GWX The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return performance of the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. Under USD2 Billion Index.

VSS Seeks to track the FTSE Global Small Cap ex US Index, providing broad exposure to developed and emerging non-U.S. small-cap equity markets worldwide through passive index sampling.

Why people hold it

• GWX The size cut is absolute, not relative: developed ex-US companies under USD 2 billion, so the portfolio stays in genuinely small territory instead of drifting up with the market.ssga.com
• About 2,100 holdings spread across developed markets outside the US, so no single company or country carries the fund.
• Trading since 2007, it has one of the longer track records in international small caps, spanning the 2008 crash and everything since.
• A plain index tracker with no style drift: what it holds lines up with the mandate it advertises, and it sits in the upper half of its peer group.

• VSS 0.06% a year, against a roughly 0.40% median for international small-cap funds. Only Schwab's SCHC matches the price.
• Developed and emerging markets in the same basket, roughly 4,800 names deep, so no single country or company carries much of the load.
• Tracks its FTSE Global Small Cap ex US benchmark closely and trades tightly for a fund built on thousands of overseas small caps.
• Running since 2009, now a multi-billion-dollar fund that pays out quarterly. Long track record, deep plumbing.vanguard.com

Worth knowing

• GWX The 0.40% fee sits right at the category median, but broad rivals like VSS and SCHC charge a fraction of that.
• Small foreign companies are a bumpy corner of the market, and the mandate says nothing about hedging, so the dollar moves your returns too.
• Moderately traded rather than a volume leader in its category, which can mean wider spreads than the busiest funds in the group.

• VSS Small caps abroad move harder than blue chips, and everything is priced back into dollars, so currency swings ride along.vanguard.com
• Vanguard samples the index rather than buying every line item, so the portfolio approximates the benchmark instead of replicating it.vanguard.com
• Coverage stops at the US border by design. American small caps sit entirely outside the mandate.

Full GWX profile⁠

Full VSS profile⁠