Vanguard Growth Index Fund: Beating the Market the Simple Way

The Vanguard Growth Index Fund is a fund worthy of study. This growth-fund's performance is solely the result of an index portfolio made up of stocks that are selected by rigid criteria, not an all-star active manager.

Despite the fund's mechanical approach to stock selection, it's managed to beat the market over three-, five-, 10-, and even 15-year periods.

How it picks great stocks

Vanguard's fund tracks an index designed by the Center for Research in Security Prices, known as the CRSP US Large Cap Growth Index. This index sorts stocks based on six fundamental factors that it believes will find the best growth stocks in the market. The six factors are as follows:

Future long-term growth in earnings per share
Future short-term growth in earnings per share
Three-year historical growth in earnings per share
Three-year historical growth in sales per share
Investment-to-assets ratio
Return on assets

After scoring each stock, the fund then invests only in the fastest-growing half of U.S. large-cap stocks. The result is a portfolio of stocks that are generally more expensive, but faster growing, than the broad market as measured by the S&P 500 Index.

One of the most notable differences is that the fund is currently overweight in technology -- 25% vs. about 17% -- and consumer cyclical stocks -- 19% vs. 11% -- compared to the S&P 500. It's also relatively underweight in financial services -- 6% vs. 15% -- and utility stocks -- less than 0.1% vs. 3.3% -- neither of which are particularly known for fast growth.

You'll recognize some of growth investors' favorite stocks among its top-10 holdings, which are listed below.

Apple
Alphabet
Amazon
Coca-Cola
Home Depot
Philip Morris International
Walt Disney
Visa
Comcast
Oracle

Keeping it simple

Of course, a fund's methodology for stock picking is only half the battle. It's notable that the fund carries an annual expense ratio of just 0.22%, not much higher than more popular stock-index funds, and certainly much-less expensive than the average active fund. The exchange-traded fund variant of this strategy -- Vanguard Growth ETF -- has an annual expense ratio of just 0.08%!

In addition, the fund tends to hold stocks for a very long time, minimizing turnover, taxes, and transaction costs. Data service Morningstar reports the fund turnover at just 9% compared to 3% for Vanguard's S&P 500 index fund. An average actively managed fund might have a turnover in excess of 100%, thus buying and selling stocks 11 times more frequently than the Vanguard Growth Index Fund.

Its historic outperformance can be simply summed up as a function of picking good growth stocks, and avoiding the common pitfall of high fees and turnover.

The article Vanguard Growth Index Fund: Beating the Market the Simple Way originally appeared on Fool.com.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Jordan Wathen has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Amazon.com, Apple, Coca-Cola, Visa, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of Oracle and has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Home Depot. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.