ITOT vs VT

ITOTAiShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF

VTAVanguard Total World Stock ETF

In short

ITOT The S&P family's answer to total-market indexing: large, mid and small U.S. stocks in one 0.03% wrapper, running since 2004. Same fee as the Vanguard and Schwab giants, a different index rulebook.

VT One ticker, the whole investable stock market: roughly 9,800 stocks across developed and emerging markets, weighted by what the market says they're worth. There is no US-versus-international call left for you to make.

Stated mandate

ITOT The fund seeks to track the performance of the S&P Composite 1500, representing U.S. stocks across market capitalizations.

VT The fund seeks to passively track the FTSE Global All Cap Index, which represents large-, mid-, and small-capitalization stocks of companies in developed and emerging markets worldwide.

Why people hold it

• ITOT 0.03% a year, matching the category's biggest names (VTI, SCHB) and sitting below what the typical fund in this group charges.
• One index, no tilts: U.S. stocks across market caps in cap-weight order. The mandate it prints is the mandate it runs.
• Trading since 2004 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund with active daily volume, so spreads are rarely the story.
• Plain 1940 Act fund structure, cash paid out quarterly.

• VT 0.06% a year, against a 0.45% median for the index wrappers it competes with. Worldwide coverage for a rounding error.
• Its benchmark comes from the FTSE Global Equity Index Series, which covers 98% of the world's investable market cap: large, mid and small caps, developed and emerging alike.vanguard.com
• Passively run with index sampling and kept fully invested. Tracking of the index has been about as tight as this cohort gets, and it trades actively enough to keep spreads thin.vanguard.com
• Live since 2008 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund, it ranks among the strongest implementations in its peer group. Pays quarterly.

Worth knowing

• ITOT Cap weighting puts the megacaps in the driver's seat; the long tail of smaller names is a thin slice of the basket.
• SPTM tracks the same declared index at the same 0.03% fee, so the pick comes down to platform, spreads and existing tax lots.
• All-equity and all-U.S. by design: no bonds, no foreign stocks in the wrapper.

• VT Market-cap weighting hands the steering wheel to the market. The biggest countries and companies dominate, and those weights drift with prices, never tilting back.vanguard.comvanguard.com
• All equity, all the time: emerging markets and unhedged foreign currency come with the package, and there is no bond sleeve to cushion a selloff.
• Single-market index funds shave the fee further (SCHK at 0.03%, SPYV at 0.04%). Global reach costs a couple of basis points more.

Full ITOT profile⁠

Full VT profile⁠