VIOV vs VTV

VIOVBVanguard S&P Small-Cap 600 Value ETF

VTVAVanguard Morningstar Value ETF

In short

VIOV Vanguard's small-cap value corner: the value slice of the S&P Small-Cap 600, held in full, for 0.10% a year. Same narrow job, same low price, since 2010.

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

VIOV The ETF seeks to track the S&P Small-Cap 600 Value Index using passive full replication and 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

• VIOV 0.10% a year, roughly half the median fee among US value ETFs. On a small-cap portfolio, that gap compounds quietly in your favor.
• Full replication, not sampling: it owns about 500 stocks and stays fully invested, and it has tracked its index very tightly.
• Live since 2010 and now a billion-dollar-plus fund, with Vanguard's index plumbing behind it. No exotic wrapper, just a 1940 Act ETF.
• One pure job, clearly stated: US small-cap value, advertised as such in the prospectus. Nothing hidden in the engine room.vanguard.com

• 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

• VIOV Thinly traded next to the giants of the value aisle. Spreads can run wider, which matters more on big or hurried orders than on small ones.
• Small-cap value is the choppy end of the value shelf. Expect deeper swings than large-cap value funds like VTV or SCHV.
• Income arrives quarterly, not monthly, and this is a total-market-value sleeve rather than a yield product.

• 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 VIOV profile⁠

Full VTV profile⁠