VUSA

Overview

Vanguard S&P 500 UCITS ETF (USD) Distributing (VUSA) tracks the S&P 500 index and holds its constituents directly, a physical replication managed by Vanguard. Dividends are paid out to holders rather than reinvested, so VUSA suits investors seeking regular income. The fund is domiciled in IE, which determines the withholding tax treatment applied to its dividends. Annual charges come to 0.07% of assets, and the fund holds 89.0B under management. Over five years the fund returned 11.9% a year on average, against 19.1% over three years. It is not eligible for the French PEA, but can be held in a securities account, a UK ISA or a German Depot. Its risk level is rated medium. Launched on 2012-05-22, the fund is denominated in USD and has 14 years of track record. It is a UCITS fund, so it follows the European framework on diversification, liquidity and asset segregation. Because VUSA distributes, every payment is taxable in the year it is received, against the dividend allowance in a general account, while it stays sheltered inside an ISA or a SIPP. Domicile in IE sets the withholding the fund itself suffers on the dividends it receives, a cost absent from the stated fee but present in the return.

At 0.07%, this fund sits among the cheapest in its category: of 224 comparable funds, only a tenth match it or do better. On £10,000 that is about 7 a year against 20 for the median fund, close to 130 of difference over a decade. Once fees are at the floor, they stop being where the difference lies: it moves to replication quality, read in the tracking difference, and to your broker's dealing cost, which can exceed the fee saving if you buy in small amounts.

Replication is physical: the fund actually holds the constituents of S&P 500, which makes its contents verifiable line by line in the issuer's report. Two points deserve attention. Securities lending first, practised by most physical funds to reduce costs: it earns a few hundredths of a point and creates an exposure to the borrower, covered by collateral, with the annual report stating the proportion lent. Rebalancing second: every change in the index's composition forces the fund to buy and sell, and those internal costs are not in the 0.07% headline. That is why two funds at the same price do not track their index with the same fidelity.

The domicile, Ireland, is not an administrative detail: it determines the withholding tax the fund suffers on the dividends it receives, and that loss appears in no fee table. On US equities, the Ireland-US treaty cuts withholding from thirty to fifteen per cent, which on a world index is mechanically worth several tenths of a point a year and explains Irish dominance of this segment. For the holder, the UCITS framework also brings the key information document in their own language, diversification rules, and separation of the fund's assets from the issuer's.

Income is distributed: the fund pays out the dividends it receives, usually one to four times a year. For a holder living off the portfolio that is what is wanted, since the income arrives without selling. For someone still accumulating it is a tax disadvantage in a taxable account: each payment is taxed in the year received, so the amount reinvested is reduced before it starts working again. Reinvesting by hand also costs a dealing commission each time and often leaves cash idle for want of the price of a whole unit. An accumulating class on the same index, where one exists, settles the question.

With 89.0 billion in assets and 14 years of history, this fund has the size and the record that make closure unlikely and the spread narrow. Three checks remain, once a year, none of which depends on the market. The ongoing charge, which an issuer revises without notice and whose gap to a competitor can invert. The tracking difference, the only figure that says whether replication stays faithful. And the methodology of S&P 500, which can change its selection or weighting rules without the fund's name moving, in which case what you hold has changed with nothing to announce it.

S&P 500 is a broad index, and that is the building block most portfolios have reason to own before any other, for a simple reason: it requires no forecast. Two points deserve checking before calling it diversified. Cap weighting concentrates the portfolio on the largest companies, so the top ten holdings can make up a substantial share, and that concentration grows without any rule changing. And the geographic scope matters: a developed-world index leaves out emerging markets, while a broad US index is not global exposure despite the international revenue of the companies it holds.

Over one year the fund shows 14.3% and over five years 11.9% annualised, two figures close together, which is the most ordinary and least informative configuration: it does not say the fund is steady, only that the chosen start and end points resemble each other. Comparing these figures with another fund means something only if the index is the same; otherwise it is an index comparison dressed as a fund comparison.

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