Vanguard World vs Vanguard S&P500

I’m new here and in the investment world. Everywhere I read all the people suggest to buy VT.
After searching for a bit (and for my untrained eye), why not Vanguard S&P500 instead?

Expense Ratio:
VOO: 0.04%
VT: 0.1%

Performance:

VOO:

VT:

Thanks in advance for your replies.

  1. Investor’s mantra: “past performance is not indicative of future results

This said, VOO invests in 510 stocks, VT in 8’109.
VOO represents only U.S. large caps, VT also has Europe, Pacific + EM.

In this period, U.S. overperforms the other markets, but 1) still applies…
think about Nikkei

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It’s a matter of diversification then?

Yes:

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Thank you for the link!

Another thing to consider: VOO looks like it performed alot better than VT for the last couple of years, but if you factor in the USD/CHF currency exchange VOO doesnt beat VT by that much any more.

This is only relevant if your base currency is CHF

Not really, currency rate affects both equally

That is true, I was talking specifically about the USD though. It affects VOO more because thats 100% in american equities vs ~56% in VT.

I know this isnt everything, like you have pointed out the currency exposure of companies revenue stream also matters, but the USDCHF exchange rate is something you have to consider if you go full VOO imo.

I guess this is a very good question for the FAQ section. I already put a fitting chart in there a long time ago, just without description. I think we discussed this question already.

The green curve is USA (VTI, VOO, S&P 500), the orange is the rest of the World (VXUS). As you can see, if you invested some money 50 years ago, you would achieve pretty similar results with both. The thing is, the World ETF (VT) is an average of the two.

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Last June, Vanguard Group removed the S&P 500 index fund from its own employee 401(k) retirement plan and replaced it with a total stock market index fund. The reason: The total stock market fund covers large-cap, mid-cap and small-cap stocks, while the S&P 500 covers only the large-cap universe.

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It seems pretty obvious after you consider this chart:

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