VMAX vs VTV

VMAXCHartford US Value ETF

VTVAVanguard Morningstar Value ETF

In short

VMAX Hartford skipped the off-the-shelf benchmark and built its own value index, then wrapped an ETF around it: about 170 US stocks screened for low valuations, priced above what plain-vanilla value beta costs.

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

VMAX The Fund seeks to track the total return of the Hartford US Value Index, which invests in U.S. equities selected for favorable value characteristics and relatively low valuations.

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

• VMAX Runs on Hartford's own index (LVMAXX) rather than a licensed S&P or Russell benchmark, screening US equities for favorable value characteristics and relatively low valuations.
• Does what the label says: a pure US value equity mandate that has stayed tightly aligned with the index it advertises.
• About 170 names, wide enough to blunt single-stock blowups without diluting the value screen into the whole market.
• Distributions land quarterly, the standard cadence for a plain equity index fund.

• 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

• VMAX At 0.29% a year it costs more than the typical US value fund (median 0.18%), and the category's largest names (VTV, SCHV, IUSV) charge 0.03% to 0.04%.
• One of the smaller, lightly traded funds in a cohort of giants, so bid-ask spreads can run wider than the household-name value ETFs.
• Launched in December 2023, so the strategy has a short live record and a proprietary index with no long public history behind it.

• 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 VMAX profile⁠

Full VTV profile⁠