Talk:Percentages of REITs present in Vanguard index funds

FYI, if you wish to rename a page, you don't actually have to create a new one and then delete the old one. Simply click the move tab. This has the advantage of also keeping the page history intact. --CyberBob 13:12, 25 June 2008 (EDT)

How is this page updated? There is a forum request to update this data, it's over 1 year old. Suggestions for the Librarians I don't see any explicit REIT holding categories in the fund profiles. --LadyGeek 02:03, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Piperwarrior, the original author of the page has not been a participant in the forum for over a year. The methodology of extracting the data is described in the "notes" to the table:


 * Holdings are derived from pages like Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund.
 * A company is considered a REIT if and only if its name includes "REIT" for the purpose of these percentages.
 * Each percentage is obtained by dividing the total market value of REITs present in a given fund by the total market value of all stocks in the fund. Thus the percentage does not reflect any other position, such as a cash position. --Blbarnitz 21:17, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how to get this info from the Vanguard link. VTSMX (Total Stock Market Index) has 3406 stocks, 3 bonds, and 1 short-term reserve. There must have been a way to download the holding info into a spreadsheet somewhere. Otherwise, it's not practical to do this update. REIT is not an equity sector, like energy, which already has the metrics completed. Yahoo finance only lists the top 10 holdings. --LadyGeek 22:05, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Are you saying you don't want to click on Next 500 times? Tell that to Vanguard. :) I know of two ways to do it.


 * (1) Download the latest semi-annual report PDF. REIT holdings are listed under Financials in the report. Copy the text from the PDF, paste into a more advanced text editor like TextPad or Notepad++. Find the lines with "trust", "realty", "property", "properties" etc.; discard the rest. Reformat the text file into two columns. Import to Excel to add up the numbers. Or


 * (2) Find the fund's report to the SEC. Look for Form N-CSR or N-Q. Download it (large file, often combined with multiple funds). Find the relevant section. Do the same number crunching. Tfb 14:24, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I am not very good at transposing word files into spreadsheets. The following table presents the holdings of the REIT Index Fund as of the last available report (Annual 1/31/2010). This supplies the universe of Equity REITS that would arguably be present if included in any other index fund. (I leave the mechanics of how to use this as a search query for other databases to those more qualified.) The total value of the REIT index fund on 1/31/2010 was 10,941,783 billion dollars.

--Blbarnitz 16:36, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Using tfb's suggestion, I tried the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund VTSMX. The prospectus suggested Form N-Q.
 * EDGAR Company Search, enter VTSMX
 * Enter N-Q in the filter box
 * Pick the most recent (2009-11-24) Format Documents
 * Pick the top HTML file, Seq 1, Type N-Q, indexfundsfinal.htm
 * The file pastes into Excel 2007 (reasonably) clean. Ctl-A to select all, Ctl-C to copy, Ctl-V to paste into an empty Excel worksheet.

This file contains all holdings for multiple Vanguard Index funds. I found the section for Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. There's exactly one holding with the word REIT. Either the fund changed significantly since the last update or I'm missing something. From tfb's suggestion, I found companies with Property, Realty Trust, and Realty Investment Trust. I need specific guidance on what to search for.

Update- The above table seems a much simpler approach. How was it generated, as I can work with administrative mechanics? --LadyGeek 16:58, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Here is the clunky way I created the table above:


 * Step One. I opened the Vanguard REIT index fund annual report (pdf file) from Vanguard and copied its list of holdings into my Microsoft word program. The list included number of shares which I had to delete by hand.
 * Step Two. I copied this edited data into the wiki and formatted it into a sortable table. This was somewhat time consuming (as mentioned, I am a klutz). What seems reasonable, to me at least, is the fact that the REIT Index Fund should hold all of the equity REITs in the US market, so if a means of querying TSM, the most comprehensive index fund, for these holdings is feasible, it would seem to me a real time saver.--Blbarnitz 17:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

A "master list" would also remove the guesswork surrounding company names (which is where I have no knowledge). Excel has a built-in function that can do the query, =VLOOKUP. Combined with the EDGAR access technique documented above, this is a straightforward approach. I'll take a look at it. --LadyGeek 20:02, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * If it is of any help, I have translated the data into a googledocs. spreadsheet:

--Blbarnitz 20:22, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Results for Vanguard Total Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX): The percentage of REITs is 1.43%, 85 REIT holdings, all categorized under "Financials" sorted in decending market value.

A significant number of companies do not have popular REIT keywords, such as property or REIT, in them. The REIT Index fund (VGSIX) is a reliable method to discover the company names. Use Excel's MATCH function after the cell has been properly formatted (translation: Excel can be frustrating at times).

Which asset value should be used for the fund total? I'm calculating the percentage as:


 * Percentage of REIT holdings = Total market value of REIT funds / Total fund assets *100

I have the following choices, which differ by a subtraction for liabilities
 * Total Investments (100.6%) (Cost $117,687,497) = 111,154,637
 * Other Assets and Liabilities-Net (-0.6%), Note 4 Includes $498,477,000 of collateral received for securities on loan. = (656,107)
 * Net Assets (100%) = 110,498,530

I'm using Net Assets (100%). --LadyGeek 15:48, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's close enough for me. Tfb 20:59, 2 May 2010 (UT

Page updated. Please review carefully. The Excel 2007 file is uploaded to Google Docs. I tried to upload a version into Google Spreadsheet, but I think the 33 sheets (approx.) may have exceeded some limits. File is in Excel 2007 format (.xlsm) to save space (2 MB vs. 6 MB). Please check if anything is missing or incorrect. I formatted the data semi-manually, which was no more than moving some occasionally misaligned columns. See the notes on the REITs sheet.

One item of note is that Vanguard does not file their holdings every quarter (see the REITs sheet for details). The EDGAR database is the easiest way to get the data. It's also the legal source, so I think this is the way to go. There are too many chances for errors when copying from Vanguard's Adobe format reports.

I kept the previous data as an interesting comparison between the September 2008 timeframe and current data. Note that all REIT holdings decreased. --LadyGeek 01:59, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Please check the Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund (VFTSX). There is no EDGAR listing for VFTSX, only VCSNX. I think it's the same fund, but was renamed. --LadyGeek 02:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)