BNDX: Vanguard Total International Bond ETF

What does BNDX hold?#

This fund owns thousands of investment grade bonds issued by governments and companies outside the United States. It uses currency hedging, which aims to reduce the effect of foreign currency changes on the fund’s value. Like other bond funds, its price tends to fall when interest rates rise.

It tracks the Bloomberg Global Aggregate ex-USD Float Adjusted RIC Capped Index (Hedged). It had 6,837 holdings as of September 30, 2026, according to Vanguard.

What is the BNDX expense ratio?#

BNDX charges 0.07% a year. An expense ratio is the yearly fee a fund takes to run itself. On $10,000, a 0.07% fee comes to about $7 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 BNDX done since 2013?#

From June 2013 to October 2026, BNDX returned about 2.2% a year. Say you put in $10,000 at the start. It would have been worth about $13,396 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.

BNDX returns by year#

What was BNDX’s worst drop?#

A drawdown is how far a fund falls from its last high point. BNDX’s worst fall was −16.2%, from December 11, 2020 to October 20, 2022. It got back to that high on February 17, 2026.

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 BNDX?#

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

• Paul Novell’s Tactical Bond Strategy, by Paul Novell, 2014
• Bond UI1 (Paul Novell’s unemployment bond strategy), by Paul Novell, 2019

How does BNDX compare with similar ETFs?#

Funds that can stand in for BNDX:

• BWX: State Street SPDR Bloomberg International Treasury Bond ETF, 0.35% a year
• IGOV: iShares International Treasury Bond ETF, 0.35% a year
• EMB: iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF, 0.39% a year
• AGG: iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF, 0.03% a year

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

Test BNDX 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 BNDX, 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 BNDX. 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 Vanguard. We checked them on October 16, 2026. Read what a backtest simulates and how to read drawdown and CAGR for more on these measures.