Vanguard Energy ETF

What this fund is

Vanguard Energy ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Vanguard, traded under the ticker VDE (ISIN US92204A3068). In a single purchase you get a diversified basket of holdings rather than a stake in just one business. At its core it is a focused, thematic fund: it concentrates on the energy part of the market, so it lives or dies by that one area rather than the economy as a whole. Underneath, it is about owning small slices of companies, so you share in their growth when they do well — and their falls when they don't. Rather than a manager picking stocks, it simply replicates the Spliced U.S.

Investable Market Energy 25/50 Index index — the passive, low-cost approach, and its largest holdings include Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips. It holds around 111 positions (the ten largest ≈ 64.1%), spreading risk so no single holding decides your outcome. Its biggest country exposures are ~93.4% United States, ~1.4% United Kingdom and ~0.5% Bermuda. Its heaviest sectors are ~99.3% Energy. A focused fund like this is typically held as a smaller 'satellite' position around a broader core — a way to lean into one theme, not usually a portfolio's only holding.

Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.09% a year — about €9 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 20.6% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. 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.)