Enduring investments
A leader in active management and indexing
A leader in active management and indexing
Vanguard offers a wide range of high-quality investments at low cost. We manage the assets of many of our funds in-house. In other cases, we entrust Vanguard fund assets to the best outside managers we can find. In every case, our focus is on long-term performance that helps investors achieve their goals.
Active management: Outperformance by design
Active management: Outperformance by design
Three factors distinguish our approach to active management:
Exceptional talent
Our scale and reputation have attracted some of the world’s best money managers to our team.
Discipline
Our patient approach to active management has enabled outperformance over the long term, despite inevitable interim periods of disappointing results.
Unique client alignment
Because our investors are our owners, we can consistently pass along economies of scale and lower the cost of investing, so our investors keep more of their potential returns.* Our built-in cost advantage also helps our portfolio managers avoid unnecessary investment risks.
87%
Share of our actively managed funds that outperformed their average competitors over the last 10 years**
$1.9T
Assets under management
Notes: All data include both mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. The outperformance figure is as of September 30, 2025. The asset figure is as of November 30, 2025. The expense figure reflects operating costs for the funds’ fiscal years that ended in 2024.
Sources: Vanguard and Lipper, a Thomson Reuters Company.
Index fund pioneers
Pioneering index funds
We launched the first index fund for individual investors in 1976, and we've been perfecting our indexing capabilities every day since. Low costs benefit our investors. So does our sophisticated approach to benchmark tracking, which lends performance predictability relative to the markets in which the funds invest.
We created the first index fund for retail investors. And we were the first to offer international indexing, small-cap indexing, bond indexing, and emerging markets indexing.
84%
0.05%
Average expense ratio, dollar-weighted
Notes: All data include both mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. The outperformance figure is as of September 30, 2025. The expense figure reflects operating costs for the funds’ fiscal years that ended in 2024.
Sources: Vanguard and Lipper, a Thomson Reuters Company.
Learn more about Vanguard investments
Learn more about Vanguard investments
Individuals, institutions, and financial advisors can all benefit from our experience and expertise in both active management and indexing.
Get detailed Vanguard fund information for:
* Vanguard is owned by its funds, which are owned by Vanguard's fund shareholder clients.
** For the ten-year period ended September 30, 2025, 6 of 6 Vanguard money market funds, 41 of 48 bond funds, 5 of 5 balanced funds, and 33 of 39 stock funds, or 85 of 98 Vanguard funds outperformed their peer group averages. Only funds with a minimum ten-year history were included in the comparison. Results for other time periods will vary. Note that the competitive performance data shown represent past performance, which is not a guarantee of future results, and that all investments are subject to risks. For the most recent performance, visit vanguard.com/performance.
Source: Lipper, a Thomson Reuters Company.
*** For the ten-year period ended September 30, 2025, 30 of 56 bond funds, 16 of 18 balanced funds, and 145 of 154 stock funds (in total, 191 of 228 indexed Vanguard funds) outperformed the average returns of their peer groups. Only funds with a minimum ten-year history were included in the comparison. Results for other time periods will vary. Note that the competitive performance data shown represent past performance, which is not a guarantee of future results, and that all investments are subject to risks. For the most recent performance, visit vanguard.com/performance.
Source: Lipper, a Thomson Reuters Company.
Notes:
Vanguard ETF Shares are not redeemable with the issuing fund other than in very large aggregations worth millions of dollars. Instead, investors must buy and sell Vanguard ETF Shares in the secondary market and hold those shares in a brokerage account. In doing so, the investor may incur brokerage commissions and may pay more than net asset value when buying and receive less than net asset value when selling.
All investing is subject to risk, including the possible loss of the money you invest.
Diversification does not ensure a profit or protect against a loss.