The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (NYSEMKT:VTI) and the State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 1500 Composite Stock Market ETF (NYSEMKT:SPTM) both offer ultra-low-cost access to the U.S. market, though VTI provides broader small-cap coverage.
Investors weighing a single-fund solution for total market exposure often land on one of these two options. While both target the same broad goal, they follow different benchmarks, which leads to meaningfully different holding counts.
Snapshot (cost & size)
Beta measures price volatility relative to the S&P 500; beta is calculated from five-year monthly returns. The 1-year return represents total return over the trailing 12 months. Dividend yield is the trailing-12-month distribution yield.
These two funds have identical expense ratios, both charging a rock-bottom 0.03%. Both funds also offer a very similar dividend yield of roughly 1%.
Performance & risk comparison
What’s inside
VTI is built for breadth, holding a total of 3,484 companies. Its largest positions include Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) at 6.7%, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) at 6.3%, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) at 4.6%. Its sector weightings include technology at 37.0%, followed by financial services at 11.3% and communication services at 9.8%.
By comparison, SPTM takes a narrower approach, tracking the S&P Composite 1500 Index, and holds 1,511 positions. Its top three positions are the same as VTI’s — with Nvidia at 7.3%, Apple at 6.5%, and Microsoft at 4.8%. Its sector weightings include technology at 37.4%, financial services at 11.4%, and consumer cyclical at 10.0%.
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What this means for investors
The number that jumps out here is the holdings gap: VTI’s 3,484 stocks versus SPTM’s 1,511. That’s the practical difference between owning virtually the entire investable U.S. stock market — including small-caps and micro-caps — versus owning a relatively more concentrated fund that leans toward larger, more established companies. For investors who want true total-market diversification, that extra small-cap exposure is often the whole point of choosing a fund like VTI in the first place.
In practice, though, the two funds behave very similarly day to day — with comparable one- and five-year returns. Both are dominated by the same mega-cap technology names, both charge the same razor-thin 0.03% fee, and both have similar sector breakdowns. That’s typical for funds chasing the same broad goal of owning the U.S. market, even when they use different index providers to get there.
