AGG: iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF

What does AGG hold?#

This fund holds thousands of investment grade US bonds, including government bonds, mortgage bonds and company bonds. It aims to match the broad US bond market. It pays out interest income each month, and its price usually falls when interest rates rise.

It tracks the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index. It had 13,416 holdings as of October 15, 2026, according to iShares (BlackRock).

What is the AGG expense ratio?#

AGG charges 0.03% a year. An expense ratio is the yearly fee a fund takes to run itself. On $10,000, a 0.03% fee comes to about $3 a year.

You never get a bill for it. The fund takes the fee out of its own value a little each day.

How has AGG done since 2003?#

From September 2003 to October 2026, AGG returned about 3.0% a year. Say you put in $10,000 at the start. It would have been worth about $19,568 at the end, with every dividend reinvested.

Prices through October 16, 2026. Figures use daily closing prices adjusted for splits, with dividends reinvested. They do not include taxes or the cost of buying and selling. Past results do not tell you what will happen next.

AGG returns by year#

What was AGG’s worst drop?#

A drawdown is how far a fund falls from its last high point. AGG’s worst fall was −18.4%, from August 4, 2020 to October 20, 2022. By October 16, 2026 it had not yet climbed back to that high.

The chart shows how far below its last high the fund was on each day. Big drops are normal for some funds. They matter because selling during a drop locks in the loss.

Which Tactfolio strategies hold AGG?#

5 classic strategies hold AGG at least some of the time. Each is a set of written rules you can open, test and copy.

• Vigilant Asset Allocation (VAA), by Wouter Keller and JW Keuning, 2017
• Dual Momentum: Antonacci’s Global Equities Momentum (GEM), by Gary Antonacci, 2014
• Papa Bear Portfolio (Muscular Portfolios), by Brian Livingston, 2018
• Baby Bear Portfolio (Muscular Portfolios), by Brian Livingston, 2018
• Diversified Dual Momentum (Newfound Research), by Corey Hoffstein (Newfound Research), 2019

How does AGG compare with similar ETFs?#

Side-by-side pages measure both funds over the same dates:

• AGG vs BND: two total US bond market funds.

Funds that can stand in for AGG:

• SCHZ: Schwab U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF, 0.03% a year
• BND: Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF, 0.03% a year
• IUSB: iShares Core Universal USD Bond ETF, 0.06% a year
• VGIT: Vanguard Intermediate-Term Treasury ETF, 0.03% a year

See all 7 AGG alternatives, compared on the same dates as AGG.

Test AGG in your own rules#

Tactfolio is a platform where you build rules-based investing strategies, backtest them on decades of real prices, share them, and run them automatically in your own Alpaca account. Open the builder, add AGG, and see how a rule such as “hold it only above its 200-day average” would have done. Strategies run on daily prices and hold US stocks and ETFs only.

The details#

Prices come from Tactfolio’s stored daily prices for AGG. Each close is adjusted for splits, and dividends are reinvested on the day the fund pays them out. CAGR is the steady yearly return that turns the starting value into the ending value. Volatility is the yearly standard deviation of daily returns.

Fund facts come from iShares (BlackRock). We checked them on October 16, 2026. Read what a backtest simulates and how to read drawdown and CAGR for more on these measures.