VBR vs VTV

VBRBVanguard Morningstar Small-Cap Value ETF

VTVAVanguard Morningstar Value ETF

In short

VBR Vanguard's small-cap value index fund, running since 2004 at five basis points. It owns roughly 800 names off the CRSP index, and CRSP's definition of "small" stretches up toward mid-cap turf, making it a gentler read on small-cap value than Russell 2000 versions.

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

VBR Vanguard Small-Cap Value ETF seeks to follow the CRSP US Small Cap Value Index, which represents U.S. small-cap value stocks. It uses a passive, full-replication approach and normally remains fully invested.

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

• VBR 0.05% a year, against a peer-group median of 0.18%. Roughly a quarter of what the typical value fund in its group charges.
• Full replication across about 800 small-cap value names, cap-weighted, so no single stock steers the portfolio.vanguard.com
• CRSP shifts companies between size indexes in half-position "packets" inside buffer bands, softening turnover when a holding drifts across the small-cap line.crsp.org
• Live since 2004, a multi-billion-dollar fund on one index mandate the whole way. Distributions land 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

• VBR CRSP calls the bottom 2%-15% of the investable market "small," so this leans larger than Russell 2000 value funds such as VTWV.crsp.com
• Small companies swing harder than large ones, and the fund normally stays fully invested through the swings.vanguard.com
• Value here is CRSP's price-ratio screen (book, earnings, dividends, sales to price). No profitability or quality filter sits on top.pnc.com

• 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 VBR profile⁠

Full VTV profile⁠