If You'd Invested $1,000 in the Vanguard Growth ETF (VUG) 10 Years Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Today

Key Points

• A $1,000 investment made in the Vanguard Growth ETF a decade ago would be worth more than $5,000 today.

• That's about $1,000 more than a similar investment in an S&P 500 index fund would be worth.

• The bull market of recent years has been led by megacap tech stocks, and these have relatively large weights in the growth ETF.

• 10 stocks we like better than Vanguard Index Funds - Vanguard Growth ETF ›

It's been a pretty strong decade for the stock market as a whole, with the benchmark S&P 500 index more than quadrupling investors' money. However, some areas of the stock market have performed even better.

Take growth stocks, for example: A $1,000 investment in the Vanguard Growth ETF (NYSEMKT: VUG) made 10 years ago would be worth about $5,100 today, assuming you had reinvested your dividends along the way. That's a stellar 17.7% annualized total return.

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Image source: Getty Images.

Why have growth stocks performed so well?

The short explanation is that the broader market's excellent performance in recent years has been powered largely by megacap technology stocks like Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and growth stock indices have more exposure to stocks like these.

VOO Total Return Price data by YCharts.

In fact, the top holdings of the Vanguard Growth ETF and the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) are exactly the same -- but the concentrations are higher because the growth ETF excludes the S&P 500's value stocks. To illustrate this, here are the respective weights of the top mega-cap stocks in both funds:

Data source: Vanguard. Data as of July 31.

Overall, 62% of the Vanguard Growth ETFs' assets are invested in the tech sector, compared with just 34% of the S&P 500. It has been an excellent decade for tech companies, so investors in the Vanguard Growth ETF have been handsomely rewarded.

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Matt Frankel has positions in Amazon and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Vanguard Index Funds-Vanguard Growth ETF, and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.