VWO: Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF

What does VWO hold?#

This fund owns shares in thousands of companies in emerging markets, which are countries whose economies are still growing, such as China, India, Taiwan, and Brazil. Prices of these stocks can change a lot from year to year. The fund’s value can also change when those countries’ currencies go up or down against the dollar.

It tracks the FTSE Emerging Markets All Cap China A Inclusion Index. It had 6,507 holdings as of September 30, 2026, according to Vanguard.

What is the VWO expense ratio?#

VWO charges 0.06% a year. An expense ratio is the yearly fee a fund takes to run itself. On $10,000, a 0.06% fee comes to about $6 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 VWO done since 2005?#

From March 2005 to October 2026, VWO returned about 6.7% a year. Say you put in $10,000 at the start. It would have been worth about $40,624 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.

VWO returns by year#

What was VWO’s worst drop?#

A drawdown is how far a fund falls from its last high point. VWO’s worst fall was −67.7%, from October 31, 2007 to November 20, 2008. It got back to that high on September 11, 2017.

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 VWO?#

8 classic strategies hold VWO 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
• Defensive Asset Allocation (DAA), by Wouter Keller and JW Keuning, 2018
• Bold Asset Allocation G4 (BAA aggressive), by Wouter Keller, 2022
• Mama Bear Portfolio (Muscular Portfolios), by Brian Livingston, 2018
• Papa Bear Portfolio (Muscular Portfolios), by Brian Livingston, 2018
• Kipnis Defensive Adaptive Asset Allocation (KDA), by Ilya Kipnis, 2019
• Resilient Asset Allocation (Keller’s RAA), by Wouter J. Keller, 2020

How does VWO compare with similar ETFs?#

Funds that can stand in for VWO:

• SCHE: Schwab Emerging Markets Equity ETF, 0.06% a year
• IEMG: iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF, 0.09% a year
• EEM: iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF, 0.72% a year
• VEU: Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF, 0.04% a year

See all 6 VWO alternatives, compared on the same dates as VWO.

Test VWO 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 VWO, 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 VWO. 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.