VEA: Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF

What does VEA hold?#

This fund owns shares in thousands of companies in developed countries outside the United States, such as Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and countries in Europe. It does not hold US stocks or stocks from emerging markets like China and India. Its value can also change when foreign currencies rise or fall against the dollar.

It tracks the FTSE Developed All Cap ex US Index. It had 3,903 holdings as of September 30, 2026, according to Vanguard.

What is the VEA expense ratio?#

VEA 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 VEA done since 2007?#

From July 2007 to October 2026, VEA returned about 5.1% a year. Say you put in $10,000 at the start. It would have been worth about $25,848 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.

VEA returns by year#

What was VEA’s worst drop?#

A drawdown is how far a fund falls from its last high point. VEA’s worst fall was −60.7%, from October 31, 2007 to March 9, 2009. It got back to that high on May 27, 2014.

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 VEA?#

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

• Hybrid Asset Allocation (HAA), by Wouter Keller and JW Keuning, 2023
• Bold Asset Allocation (BAA), by Wouter Keller, 2022
• Bold Asset Allocation G4 (BAA aggressive), by Wouter Keller, 2022

How does VEA compare with similar ETFs?#

Funds that can stand in for VEA:

• SCHF: Schwab International Equity ETF, 0.03% a year
• IEFA: iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF, 0.07% a year
• EFA: iShares MSCI EAFE ETF, 0.32% a year
• VEU: Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF, 0.04% a year

See all 8 VEA alternatives, compared on the same dates as VEA.

Test VEA 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 VEA, 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 VEA. 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.