Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF Will Be Back Above $1 Trillion in Assets Before the Year Is Out. Here’s the Math.
Earlier this summer, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) held a title no ETF had ever claimed. In early June, it became the first exchange-traded fund in history to cross $1 trillion in assets. Then the market pulled back, and the milestone slipped away. As of Friday’s close, the fund held about $979 billion,…
Earlier this summer, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) held a title no ETF had ever claimed. In early June, it became the first exchange-traded fund in history to cross $1 trillion in assets.
Then the market pulled back, and the milestone slipped away. As of Friday’s close, the fund held about $979 billion, with its shares at $686.65. Even after a two-day rally to close out July, the fund sits roughly $21 billion shy of the line.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
But I don’t think the fund stays below the line for long. My prediction is that the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF finishes the year back above $1 trillion. And the case rests on arithmetic more than on optimism.
Image source: Getty Images.
A 2% gap, and two forces closing it
The gap itself is small. Getting from about $979 billion back to $1 trillion requires roughly $21 billion, or a gain of about 2%.
Two forces work on that gap, and both have been pushing in the same direction all year.
The first is new money. Investors poured about $69 billion into the fund in the first five months of 2026. That works out to nearly $14 billion a month. Indeed, when the fund crossed the $1 trillion line in June, the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF held about $860 billion and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust about $786 billion.
At that pace, inflows alone could close the gap in under two months — even if the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) goes nowhere.
The second force is the market itself. Every 1% move in the S&P 500 shifts the fund’s assets by close to $10 billion. A 2% rally, which the index can produce in a good week, covers the entire distance in one stroke. Pair a modestly rising market with the fund’s steady inflows, and the line gets crossed well before December.
For the prediction to fail, the index would need to fall meaningfully from here and stay down for the remaining five months of the year, with the decline deep enough to overwhelm nearly $14 billion a month of new money. That’s possible. Markets have bad stretches. But it’s a much bigger ask than the 2% the prediction needs.
Why the money keeps coming
The inflow side is the part that doesn’t depend on the market’s mood, so it deserves a closer look.
It isn’t the yield attracting the money. As a dividend stock, the fund is unremarkable, yielding about 1.1%. The draw is cost. The fund charges an expense ratio of 0.03%, which means an investor with $100,000 in it pays about $30 a year.
Index competitors charge similarly little, but the fund’s scale and Vanguard’s brand have made it the default choice for a huge share of the money moving into index funds.
The record helps, too. The fund has compounded at about 15% annually since its launch in September 2010. Investors shouldn’t extrapolate that figure forward, as it covers one of the better stretches in market history, capped by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
But performance like that, at nearly no cost, explains why the money keeps arriving. In other words, it’s the ETFs minuscule expense ratio that is key to its value proposition.
At $1 trillion in assets, a 0.03% fee produces only about $300 million a year in fee revenue for Vanguard. The fund’s owners keep almost everything the market delivers, and scale is what makes those economics work for the manager.
Of course, the fund carries real concentration risk. More than a third of its assets sit in its 10 largest holdings, and chipmaker Nvidia alone accounts for 7.5%.
A slump concentrated in the market’s biggest growth stocks would therefore drag the fund down disproportionately, and it would push the $1 trillion date out with it.
And this prediction is a statement more about arithmetic than a market call. I have no idea what the S&P 500 will do over the next five months. I simply think a 2% gap, set against nearly $14 billion a month of inflows, has a reasonable chance of closing soon.
Should you buy stock in Vanguard S&P 500 ETF right now?
Before you buy stock in Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $386,727!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,232,139!*
That performance is why people listen. With a track record of beating the S&P 500 by 4x, Stock Advisor offers a distinct advantage. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built for the long haul.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of August 2, 2026.
Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Prediction: Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF Will Be Back Above $1 Trillion in Assets Before the Year Is Out. Here’s the Math. was originally published by The Motley Fool
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
