How To View All of Vanguard’s Mutual Funds
Vanguard is a well-known brokerage and financial services company. They invented the Index Fund, a fund that buys & sells a portfolio of stocks based on an Index (e.g., the US Stock Market Index) rather than via active management.
And for a long-time they were the only providers of Index funds, with most notably Index Funds that tracked large, well-known financial indices such as the S&P 500, or the US Treasury Index, etc.
But now there are all kinds of stock indices. They can be fun to explore, and, in some rare cases, actually invest in. Specific indices can provide diversification or exposure to a segment that fits specific needs.
However, there is a little trick to viewing everything that Vanguard has. They censor their “complete” fund list on their Investor site.
You can view their list of funds available on the Investor website here. It’s what most everyone who invests via Vanguard sees.
But the funds listed on their Investor site are not all the funds that are open for purchase. They actually keep *a lot* of funds hidden due to high minimums, fund volatility, or complexity of index. In other words, they pre-filter their list of funds to protect the average investor.
Yes, it’s a good idea because even the most sophisticated investors should probably just stick with the Total Stock Market Index. But still…once you get the personal finance bug, it’s just fun to explore this stuff.
The trick is to go to Vanguard’s Financial Professional’s site, and view the list of investment products.*
*Yes, there’s even more on the Institutional site, but those are just copies with higher minimums and lower fees. There’s no truly new funds.
Here’s what you’ll find – more than 100+ more funds than at the Investor’s site. They are all available for purchase…albeit with usually much higher minimums.
If you are interested in buying one, you can open your account, click buy fund and type the symbol into the box, and the fund will show up.
So that’s how to actually view all of Vanguard’s funds…even if it means coming right back to the same four or three (or two) that are proven effective for long-term investing.
*For portfolio testing, PortfolioVisualizer is the best free back-testing tool on the Internet. Very useful.