Why the Vanguard Consumer Staples Index Fund ETF (VDC) Could Be the Smartest Pre-Summer Addition to Your Portfolio

1 hour ago 3

Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool

Sun, May 31, 2026 astatine 5:00 PM CDT 4 min read

What are you expecting this summer? Lots of blistery and humid days? Time spent moving successful your garden? Maybe you're expecting a banal marketplace pullback, oregon a recession. After all, the banal marketplace has been soaring for overmuch of the past decade, and whitethorn beryllium owed for a breather this twelvemonth oregon next.

If you're anticipating an economical slowdown successful the comparatively adjacent future, see investing successful the Vanguard Consumer Staples Index Fund ETF (NYSEMKT: VDC) -- due to the fact that user staples are items that we thin to request to bargain nary substance what the system is doing.

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Meet the Vanguard Consumer Staples Index Fund ETF

The Vanguard Consumer Staples Index Fund ETF is an scale money that tracks the MSCI US Investable Market Consumer Staples 25/50 index, focused on, of course, user staples specialists.

It's besides an exchange-traded money (ETF) -- a money that trades similar a stock, meaning that you tin spot an bid to bargain oregon merchantability arsenic galore shares arsenic you'd similar via immoderate bully brokerage -- astatine immoderate clip during the trading day. (Mutual funds mostly grip their inflows and outflows erstwhile a day.)

One fantabulous diagnostic of the Vanguard Consumer Staples Index Fund ETF is its debased disbursal ratio (annual fee). It's conscionable 0.09%, meaning you'll person to cough up lone $9 for each $10,000 you person invested successful the fund.

Here's however the ETF has performed:

Over the Last...

Average Annual Return

One year

5.4%

Three years

8.69%

Five years

6.83%

Ten years

9.84%

Data source: Morningstar.com, arsenic of May 28.

The ETF contains astir 104 stocks. Here are its caller apical 10 holdings, which unneurotic marque up a hefty 65% of the fund's value:

Company

Recent Weighting successful the ETF

Walmart

16.15%

Costco Wholesale

12.26%

Procter & Gamble

9.12%

Coca-Cola

8.34%

PepsiCo

4.53%

Philip Morris International

4.16%

Altria Group

3.92%

Mondelez International

2.59%

Colgate-Palmolive

2.15%

Target

1.99%

Data source: Morningstar.com, arsenic of May 28.

Why bargain this ETF?

If you're reasoning that you don't emotion that the apical 10 holdings marque up two-thirds of the fund's value, that's fair. You mightiness put alternatively successful the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Staples ETF -- which holds astir 36 user staples companies successful astir adjacent proportion. But its returns are considerably little than those of the Vanguard ETF.

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