VAW: Vanguard Materials ETF

What does VAW hold?#

This fund owns shares of about 110 US companies that make basic materials. These include chemicals, metals, mining, building materials, and paper and packaging. Their prices often rise and fall with the economy and with prices of raw materials.

It tracks the MSCI US Investable Market Materials 25/50 Index. It had 110 holdings as of September 30, 2026, according to Vanguard.

What is the VAW expense ratio?#

VAW charges 0.09% a year. An expense ratio is the yearly fee a fund takes to run itself. On $10,000, a 0.09% fee comes to about $9 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 VAW done since 2004?#

From January 2004 to October 2026, VAW returned about 8.9% a year. Say you put in $10,000 at the start. It would have been worth about $68,699 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.

VAW returns by year#

What was VAW’s worst drop?#

A drawdown is how far a fund falls from its last high point. VAW’s worst fall was −62.2%, from May 16, 2008 to March 9, 2009. It got back to that high on January 9, 2013.

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 VAW?#

No classic strategy holds VAW yet. You can add it to your own rules in the builder and see how they would have done.

How does VAW compare with similar ETFs?#

Funds that can stand in for VAW:

• XLB: State Street Materials Select Sector SPDR ETF, 0.08% a year
• XLI: State Street Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF, 0.08% a year
• VIS: Vanguard Industrials ETF, 0.09% a year
• XLE: State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF, 0.08% a year

See all 5 VAW alternatives, compared on the same dates as VAW.

Test VAW 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 VAW, 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 VAW. 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 17, 2026. Read what a backtest simulates and how to read drawdown and CAGR for more on these measures.