Vanguard was founded on a simple but revolutionary idea—that an investment company shouldn't have any outside owners. That's why we're structured the way we are: Our funds own our company, and investors like you own our funds.
We're never distracted by the demands of private owners or other outside interests. So as more investors choose our index funds and new economies of scale help us lower costs, those benefits are passed directly to you.
While other companies are just catching on to the power of low-cost investing, it's what we were built to do. And we have the math to prove it: In the past 7 years alone, lower expense ratios saved index investors like you over $715 million.1
Over $715 million
in estimated cumulative savings over the past 7 years based on total assets under management.
$3 trillion
invested in Vanguard index mutual funds and ETFs.1
We started the indexing revolution and have led the charge for the entire investment community ever since. It's our structure that empowers us to keep striving to give you the absolute best.
The average expense ratio across our index mutual funds and ETFs is 73% less than the industry average.2
84% of our index mutual funds and ETFs have performed better than their peer-group averages over the last 10 years.3
We launched the first index fund for individual investors in 1976. And we've been perfecting our benchmark selection and tracking skills every day since.
ETFs—like mutual funds—are broadly diversified collections of individual stocks or bonds.
But while mutual funds are only priced at the end of each trading day, ETFs have real-time prices that change throughout the trading day.
A strategy intended to lower your chances of losing money on your investments.
Diversification can be achieved in many ways, including spreading your investments across:
Cumulative figure for all share classes from the 2012 calendar year through the 2018 calendar year for Vanguard's U.S.-domiciled index mutual funds and ETFs. Estimated savings is the difference between prior and current expense ratios multiplied by average assets under management (AUM). Average AUM is based on month-end assets, which are then averaged over the 12 months of the calendar year. Ending assets are as of December 31, 2018.