VYM: Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

What does VYM hold?#

This fund owns shares of about 590 US companies that pay higher dividends than average. Dividends are cash payments that companies share with their owners. The fund does not hold REITs and pays out dividends four times a year.

It tracks the FTSE High Dividend Yield Index. It had 593 holdings as of September 30, 2026, according to Vanguard.

What is the VYM expense ratio?#

VYM charges 0.04% a year. An expense ratio is the yearly fee a fund takes to run itself. On $10,000, a 0.04% fee comes to about $4 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 VYM done since 2006?#

From November 2006 to October 2026, VYM returned about 9.3% a year. Say you put in $10,000 at the start. It would have been worth about $58,224 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.

VYM returns by year#

What was VYM’s worst drop?#

A drawdown is how far a fund falls from its last high point. VYM’s worst fall was −57.0%, from October 9, 2007 to March 5, 2009. It got back to that high on March 13, 2012.

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 VYM?#

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

How does VYM compare with similar ETFs?#

Side-by-side pages measure both funds over the same dates:

• SCHD vs VYM: two dividend stock funds that pick companies in different ways.

Funds that can stand in for VYM:

• SCHD: Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF, 0.06% a year
• SPYD: State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF, 0.07% a year
• HDV: iShares Core High Dividend ETF, 0.08% a year
• SPHD: Invesco S&P 500 High Dividend Low Volatility ETF, 0.3% a year

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

Test VYM 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 VYM, 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 VYM. 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.