The Vanguard Total International Stock Index mutual fund is a low cost alternative for broad, passive index investing internationally. This fund is a composite of three other Vanguard international funds: the Vanguard European Stock Index Fund (55.7%), the Vanguard Pacific Stock Index Fund (24.1%), and the Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund (20.2%). The percentages in the previous sentence indicate the recent composite portfolio weighting across these three separate funds.
This Vanguard Total International Stock Index mutual fund does not have a separate management team, but instead relies upon the teams of the three Vanguard international index mutual funds that compose this composite fund. With a recent weighted average management expense ratio across these three funds of .32%, this is one of the lowest cost means to gain very broad international equity market exposure to over 2,000 European, Pacific, and emerging market stocks.
The diversified investment fund strategy and policy of the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund
According to Vanguard’s website, the investment strategy of the Vanguard Total International Stock Index mutual fund (VGTSX) is to use: “a ‘passive management’ – or indexing – investment approach. The fund seeks to track the performance of the Total International Composite Index by investing in these three other Vanguard funds … These other funds seek to track the MSCI Europe Index, the MSCI Pacific Index, and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which together make up the Total International Composite Index. … The underlying funds in which the fund invests fully replicate the holdings of their index benchmarks, matching the characteristics of each index (such as country weighting, market capitalization, and industry sector diversification).”
The Fund Authority Score for the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund
The table below presents the Fund Authority Score and other information for the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund.
Fund Authority Scores rate mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) on the most important economic factors that influence individual investors’ net long term diversified investment fund performance. The Skilled Investor developed the Fund Authority Score system to provide individual investors with concise and objective summaries of mutual funds and ETFs for comparisons within investment asset classes.
Using an integer scale ranging from -10 to +10, Fund Authority Scores measure five factors:
1) annualized management and investment sales expenses (40% weighting), 2) annual trading costs implied by investment fund portfolio turnover (30% weighting), 3) inferior and superior historical [...]