Investors Flocking to Vanguard Growth ETF
The net leader in asset flows in recent sessions is the steadily growing VUG (Vanguard Growth ETF, Expense Ratio 0.10%), as it has attracted north of $700 million via creation activity.
Reflective of the institutional appetite for U.S. equities this year, the ETF has broken out to a new multi-year high today and has steadily traded above its 50 day moving average for the entire year thus far in 2013.
What is most interesting about VUG is that its top holding is AAPL (8.90%), followed by IBM (3.24%), GOOG (2.80%), KO (2.20%), and PM (2.19%), and there is clearly a bias in the weightings toward the Technology sector (30.08% of the portfolio), which makes sense given the “Growth” mandate.
It is no secret that AAPL stock has struggled mightily in 2013 from a performance standpoint, really going back to its momentous collapse that began in the fall of 2012, but VUG has continued to chug along. This is a testament of “diversification” in ETFs in general, and being able to isolate underperformers in a portfolio, in this case AAPL, via other stocks that may be headed in a different direction in terms of price.
PM and KO are such examples as both stocks are trading at new multiyear highs currently for instance ahead of expected earnings (PM reports on 4/18 and KO on 4/16).
VUG is the third largest ETF in terms of assets under management ($10.68 billion currently) in the “Large Cap Growth Equity” category, behind IWF (iShares Russell 1000 Growth, Expense Ratio 0.20%) and QQQ (PowerShares QQQ Trust, Expense Ratio 0.20%), both of which are also heavily weighted to AAPL (IWF has a 5.78% weighting while QQQ’s weighting is currently 13.63%).
VUG has bucked the trend in terms of net asset flows comparatively thus far in 2013, as both IWF and QQQ have lost $755 million and $643 million respectively.
Vanguard Growth ETF
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