VEA charges 0.07% per year, or $7 on a $10,000 investment, making it one of the least expensive international ETFs on the market. However, some rival funds have comparable or lower fees. That could be a sign that, in the future, Vanguard could reduce VEA’s expense ratio.
VEA “owns more than 3,600 stocks across foreign developed markets and weights them by market capitalization,” said Morningstar in a recent note. “This approach promotes low turnover and skews the portfolio toward large multinational firms with global operations, such as Nestle, Toyota, and Novartis. Since the fund’s inception in 2007, its turnover ratio has averaged 8%, which helps keep transaction costs low. In contrast, the foreign large-blend Morningstar Category’s average turnover was greater than 50% in the most recent year.”
The median market value of VEA components is $28.8 billion. The ETF has $66.7 billion in assets under management, making it one of the largest US-listed ETFs, regardless of asset class followed.
For more information on international markets, visit our global ETFs category.