Vanguard 0-3 Month Treasury Bill ETF

What this fund is

Vanguard 0-3 Month Treasury Bill ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Vanguard, traded under the ticker VBIL (ISIN US9220408457). In a single purchase you get a diversified basket of holdings rather than a stake in just one business. In plain terms it is about very short-term, cash-like instruments, aimed at protecting your money and earning a little interest rather than growing it, spread across its target market. Rather than a manager picking stocks, it simply replicates the Bloomberg US Treasury Bills 0-3 Months index — the passive, low-cost approach, and its largest holdings include United States Treasury Bill, United States Treasury Bill and United States Treasury Bill.

Spread across roughly 26 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 54.7%), no one position makes or breaks the fund. Geographically it leans ~100% United States. Funds like this are often used as the steadier, lower-swing part of a portfolio — the ballast that cushions the ups and downs of shares. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.06% a year — about €6 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund.

It holds the underlying investments directly (physical replication); it is domiciled in the United States and trades in USD. Its price has swung about 0.2% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. Like any investment, it can lose value as well as gain, and what it did before does not predict what it will do next. (Fund data sourced from Vanguard.)