Vanguard ETF Returns YTD

Was just browsing through various places to see what the Year to Date performance of various asset classes and sectors were today.  Eventually I wandered onto Vanguard's website and checked out their ETF performances.  I'm a bit surprised how many ETF's Vanguard has now.  I know they were moving into the field several years ago trying to dethrone iShares and they're doing pretty well at it I must say.  If you want to buy any ETF's, go for Vanguard first.  Their reputation for quality and low cost is well deserved.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, here's a list of their top ETF by return.

The top ETF, VNQI, the ex-US Real Estate aboslutely crushed everything with a year to date return of 37%.  That's pretty incredible.  The next 3 are the Consumer Discretionary (surprising considering the weakness in consumer demand) at 24.7%, Financials (after a dismal last couple years, reversion to the mean is helping) at 24%, and Health Care at 22%.

What's interesting to look at in my opinion is the various assets that are somewhat related to each other and people usually ask about in terms of allocation:

By Market Caps YTD:

• S&P 500 - 15.18%
• Large Cap - 15.26%
• Mid Cap - 13.82%
• Small Cap - 14.97%

The general investing advice I've always seen has emphasized small caps for disproportionate growth.  While this year large cap has beaten both small and mid, if you look at the 5 year annualized return, small cap did beat mid and large, 4.37% vs 3.38% and 1.58% respectively.  

Nevertheless, this year, the top performer are large caps, though by a relatively small margin.  

You can find the entire list at: Vanguard ETFs