ISCV vs VTV

ISCVAiShares Morningstar Small Cap Value ETF

VTVAVanguard Morningstar Value ETF

In short

ISCV A 2004-vintage way to own the cheap end of small caps: roughly 1,100 names screened on value measures, for 0.06% a year, about a third of what the typical value ETF charges.

VTV Value investing for three cents on every hundred dollars a year. Since 2004, VTV has run a passive, fully invested portfolio of roughly 300 large US companies that screen cheap, at a fee near the industry floor.

Stated mandate

ISCV The fund seeks to follow an index of U.S. small-cap stocks chosen using value-oriented measures including forward earnings, book value, sales, cash flow, and dividend yield, providing targeted U.S. small-cap value exposure.

VTV The fund seeks to track a large-capitalization U.S. value-stock benchmark through passive indexing and substantial replication of that index.

Why people hold it

• ISCV Charges 0.06% a year against a 0.18% median for its value peer group. Cost basically stops being part of the conversation.
• About 1,100 holdings, so one small-cap blowup barely registers. This is a wide net across the value patch, not a stock-picker's short list.
• Value is judged on forward earnings, book value, sales, cash flow and dividend yield, not price-to-book alone, and the fund has tracked that index tightly.
• Trading since 2004 under the iShares roof, with cash paid out quarterly.

• VTV 0.03% a year, about a sixth of the 0.18% median for US value funds. Cost is the part of the outcome the fund actually controls.
• Same recipe, very different sticker: PRXV tracks the same declared value index and charges 0.36%, twelve times VTV's fee.
• Passively managed, full replication, fully invested. No manager hunches, no cash sitting idle, and the fund has tracked its benchmark closely.vanguard.com
• One of the largest and most actively traded funds in the US value aisle, the kind of scale that keeps bid-ask spreads thin for ordinary orders.

Worth knowing

• ISCV Thinly traded for its category. Spreads can run wider and size can push the price, so limit orders matter more here than at the mega-funds.
• Small caps plus a value screen is the bumpy end of the equity market. Drawdowns here have historically run deeper than large-cap value.
• The low fee isn't exclusive: VTWV matches 0.06%, and large-cap value siblings VTV and SCHV sit lower still.

• VTV Large caps only, about 300 of them. Cheap mid- and small-cap stocks live in separate funds (VOE, VTWV), so this is one slice of value, not the whole market.
• It is a value screen by design, so the priciest fast growers are largely filtered out. In growth-led stretches it can move very differently from a total-market fund.
• Income arrives quarterly, in four instalments rather than a monthly drip.

Full ISCV profile⁠

Full VTV profile⁠