VTV vs VTWV

VTVAVanguard Morningstar Value ETF

VTWVBVanguard Russell 2000 Value ETF

In short

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.

VTWV Vanguard's take on the unglamorous end of the market: roughly 1,400 small US companies screened onto the value side of the Russell 2000, for six basis points a year.

Stated mandate

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

VTWV The fund seeks to track the Russell 2000 Value Index, which represents U.S. small-capitalization value stocks.

Why people hold it

• 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.

• VTWV Costs 0.06% a year, about a third of the typical fee among US value ETFs and far below the 0.30% on the other fund citing the same declared index (DFSV).
• Breadth over bets: about 1,400 names, the whole value half of the Russell 2000, so no single small-cap story drives the result.
• Russell scores style by probability, so a borderline stock can sit partly in value and partly in growth instead of being forced across a hard line.lseg.com
• Running since 2010 and tracking its benchmark tightly, it sits in the top quartile of its value-ETF peer group on our review.

Worth knowing

• 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.

• VTWV Small-cap value is the bumpy end of equities. This is one of the more volatile risk profiles in its value peer group, and drawdowns can be deep.
• It trades thinly next to the household-name value ETFs, so spreads deserve attention and limit orders earn their keep.
• Membership resets on the index's schedule, not a manager's judgment. Names move between value and growth at reconstitution.lseg.com

Full VTV profile⁠

Full VTWV profile⁠