Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth ETF

What this fund is

Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Vanguard, traded under the ticker VOT (ISIN US9229085389). One trade buys a whole basket of holdings, so your money is spread out instead of riding on a single company. In plain terms 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, spread across its target market. It follows the Spliced Mid Cap Growth Index index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down, and its largest holdings include Seagate Technology Holdings plc, Vertiv Holdings Co. Class A and Quanta Services Inc..

With about 130 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 22.9%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names. Its biggest country exposures are ~90.8% United States, ~4.8% Ireland and ~0.9% Switzerland. By industry it concentrates most in ~29% Technology and ~24.6% Industrials. It is commonly used to tilt a portfolio towards one market, usually alongside broader, more global funds rather than on its own. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.05% a year — about €5 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 17% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. As with any investment, its value can go down as well as up, and past performance is not a guide to future results. (Fund data sourced from Vanguard.)