VGSH: Vanguard Short-Term Treasury ETF

What does VGSH hold?#

This fund owns about 90 US Treasury bonds that are paid back in 1 to 3 years. Treasury bonds are loans to the US government. Because the bonds are short, their prices usually move less when interest rates change.

It tracks the Bloomberg US Treasury 1-3 Year Bond Index. It had 92 holdings as of September 30, 2026, according to Vanguard.

What is the VGSH expense ratio?#

VGSH 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 VGSH done since 2009?#

From November 2009 to October 2026, VGSH returned about 1.4% a year. Say you put in $10,000 at the start. It would have been worth about $12,646 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.

VGSH returns by year#

What was VGSH’s worst drop?#

A drawdown is how far a fund falls from its last high point. VGSH’s worst fall was −5.7%, from April 20, 2021 to October 20, 2022. It got back to that high on May 15, 2024.

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 VGSH?#

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

How does VGSH compare with similar ETFs?#

Funds that can stand in for VGSH:

• SHY: iShares 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF, 0.15% a year
• SGOV: iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF, 0.09% a year
• BIL: State Street SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF, 0.1353% a year
• SHV: iShares 0-1 Year Treasury Bond ETF, 0.15% a year

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

Test VGSH 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 VGSH, 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 VGSH. 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.