Right Now You Can Buy the Whole U.S. Stock Market and Zero Out the Fee
This ETF tracks its index so closely that you'll wind up paying nothing for it
This article is for subscribers only.
Every ETF has room for improvement. Except, perhaps, for one.
It's the Vanguard Total Stock Market exchanged-traded fund (VTI). While it has always provided dirt-cheap access to the full breadth and depth of the U.S. stock market, it is now returning the exact same amount as the stock index it's based on. Both are up 4.2 percent so far this year. That means investors are effectively getting free exposure to 99 percent of the investable U.S. stock market through 3,700 large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks .