Vanguard index fund investor returns

Beginning in 2006 Morningstar has calculated dollar-weighted investor returns for the mutual funds in their database.  provides a convenient means of accessing this returns data for Vanguard index funds.

Morningstar limits the data to only one share class, primarily investor shares, per fund. Morningstar reports admiral share class data only for funds--such as Vanguard's tax-managed funds and most of the sector index funds--that do not offer investor shares.

Investor return
Morningstar defines investor return as:

When using trailing dollar-weighted investor returns for fund analysis, investors must realize that the calculations are subject to end-point bias, meaning that the results tend to be skewed by the most resent market returns. Thus investor return will be higher if recent market returns are high, and investor return will be lower if recent returns are poor.

Morningstar supplies investor returns over 1,3,5,10, and 15 year holding periods and advises that investor returns data are more significant when viewed over the longer-term five-year, ten-year, and fifteen-year holding periods. Morningstar also finds that for funds in similar categories, investor returns for funds with higher volatility of return are lower than the returns of funds with lower volatility of return. .

Evidence from investor fund flows
Poor timing of investor purchases and sales of fund shares is one factor that can lead to low investor returns. Investor fund flows into stock funds (see left table), as measured by the Investment Company Institute (ICI), show that fund investors tend to have rising purchases of fund shares in rising markets, colloquially known as "buying high" and tend to liquidate shares when markets produce negative returns, colloquially known as "selling low".

Similarly, investor fund flows into bond funds (see right table) tend to track bond fund total returns. Thus investors tend to purchase bond fund shares when bond fund total returns are high, often a result of falling interest rates that increase both bond prices and bond fund net asset values. Investors tend to sell bond fund shares when total returns are low, often a result of rising interest rates that lower both bond prices and bond fund net asset values. 

List of Morningstar investor returns for Vanguard index funds
The following lists provide links to Morningstar investor returns for Vanguard index funds. The list also includes Vanguard's index-based tax-managed funds.

U.S. equity index funds
The list tables include Vanguard U.S. equity index funds benchmarked to various index provider indexes.

CRSP benchmark index funds
Vanguard offers index funds, benchmarked to CRSP benchmark indexes, that cover the total U.S. market; large cap, mid cap and small cap stocks; and growth and value stocks. Note that Morningstar does not provide investor returns for the Vanguard mega cap funds.

S&P benchmark index funds
Morningstar provides investor returns for three of Vanguard's index funds that track S&P indexes. Vanguard offers an additional suite of S&P index exchange-traded funds, but Morningstar only provides investor return data for mutual funds

MSCI sector benchmark index funds
Vanguard offers eleven U.S. stock market sector funds tracking indexes provided by MSCI.

FTSE international benchmark index funds
Vanguard's international stock index funds track FTSE indexes.

Balanced index funds
Vanguard's balanced index funds include the Vanguard retirement date and Vanguard life strategy fund of funds.