Vanguard S&P 500 ETF

The fund launched on August 31, 1976, sought to track the performance of the S&P 500 Index and raised just $11.3 million at launch, far short of its $150 million target.⁠[1]

It was later renamed Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and its initial annual operating expenses amounted to 0.43%.⁠[2]

In 2000, Vanguard was given an exemption from certain provisions of the Investment Company Act of 1940, allowing it to issue ETF shares as a class of shares of its existing mutual funds.⁠[3]

In May 2001, Vanguard announced Vanguard Total Stock Market VIPERs (Vanguard Index Participation Equity Receipts), scheduled to begin trading on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol VTI at the end of that month. The VIPER shares were not a stand-alone product but a new share class of the $24 billion Total Stock Market Index Fund, tradable through a broker during the day, with an annual expense ratio of 0.15%.⁠[4]

Vanguard patented this structure of ETF shares as a share class of mutual funds in 2003.⁠[3]

The ETF Shares of Vanguard 500 Index Fund were launched on September 7, 2010, under the ticker VOO.⁠[2]

In September 2010, Vanguard introduced eight index mutual funds and nine ETFs based on S&P domestic stock benchmarks, including ETF shares of its flagship Vanguard 500 Index Fund with an expense ratio of 0.06%.⁠[5]

VOO took direct aim at the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), whose annual expenses were 0.09%.⁠[6]

In April 2012, Vanguard cut expense ratios on several popular ETFs, lowering that of Vanguard S&P 500 ETF from 0.06% to 0.05%.⁠[7]

In May 2017, the expense ratio of Vanguard S&P 500 ETF fell by 1 basis point to 0.04%.⁠[8]

In April 2019, Vanguard trimmed fees on 21 ETFs, cutting VOO’s expense ratio from 0.04% to 0.03% and making it the cheapest ETF in the US to track the S&P 500 Index.⁠[9]

The summary prospectus dated April 29, 2021, states that the fund is listed on NYSE Arca and employs an indexing investment approach to track the S&P 500 Index, investing all, or substantially all, of its assets in the index’s stocks and holding each in approximately the same proportion as its index weighting. Its portfolio managers were Donald M. Butler (since 2016) and Michelle Louie (since 2017).⁠[10]

Vanguard’s patent was set to expire in May 2023. It had let Vanguard launch new ETFs as additional share classes of existing index mutual funds rather than as standalone products, and the ETF share class helps keep capital gains distributions low across a fund’s share classes.⁠[11]

The patent expired in 2023. Under the structure, investors can access the same portfolio of stocks through two formats, a mutual fund and an ETF.⁠[12]

As of February 18, 2025, VOO held about $632 billion in assets, surpassing the $630 billion of SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) to become the world’s biggest ETF, with iSharesiSharesiShares is the exchange-traded fund (ETF) brand of the asset manager BlackRock. It grew out of the WEBS country index funds, which began operating in 1996, was run under the iShares name by Barclays Global Investors from 2000, and passed to BlackRock in 2009 when BlackRock acquired Barclays Global Investors. As of September 30, 2026, BlackRock’s ETF assets under management were about $6.36 trillion, with products spanning equities, bonds, commodities and digital assets.Open the full entry Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) third at $609 billion. Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, called it “a tremendous milestone for Vanguard, the ETF industry.”⁠[13]

At the time SPY charged 0.095% a year. VOO drew a record of more than $116 billion of inflows in 2024 and had yet to post a net annual outflow.⁠[14]

In 2025, investors made $137.7 billion in new net investments in VOO, which Vanguard called “a record-breaking inflow for an ETF.”⁠[2]

On June 2, 2026, Vanguard S&P 500 ETF became the first in the history of ETFs to reach and exceed $1 trillion in assets, which Vanguard confirmed the following day, less than 18 months after it overtook the SPDR S&P 500 ETF.⁠[15]

At the time iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) held about $860 billion and SPY about $786 billion, and VOO had taken in $69 billion of net inflows in 2026.⁠[16]

On August 31, 2026, Vanguard marked the 50th anniversary of Vanguard 500 Index Fund.⁠[1]

As of September 30, 2026, VOO employed a passively managed, full-replication strategy, paid dividends quarterly and was managed by Michelle Louie, Nick Birkett and Aurelie Denis. It held 505 stocks (index: 503), and ETF total net assets were $1,032.3 billion.⁠[17]

The top 10 holdings made up 40.6%, led by NVIDIANVIDIANVIDIA is an American semiconductor and computing technology company that provides graphics processing units, artificial intelligence infrastructure, networking interconnects, and computing software, and is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NVDA.Open the full entry (8.4%), Apple (7.4%) and Microsoft (5.8%), and information technology accounted for 39.7%.⁠[17]

The tables below list, by GICS sector, the 500 companies (503 stocks) in the S&P 500, the index VOO tracks, as of October 30, 2026.⁠[18]