Why I Will Let This Mid-Cap ETF Ride for Decades

2 days ago 4

James Brumley, The Motley Fool

Mon, December 29, 2025 astatine 9:50 AM CST 4 min read

Anyone who has been successful the banal marketplace for agelong capable has apt heard the merits of scale money investing. They're elemental to ain and often nutrient amended returns than picking idiosyncratic stocks. And successful astir cases, an scale money similar the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF or the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust -- built to reflector the S&P 500 -- is the go-to recommendation.

That's not your lone enactment though. In fact, it's arguably not adjacent your champion option. Your portfolio whitethorn beryllium acold amended served with a involvement successful the Vanguard Mid-Cap ETF (NYSEMKT: VO). Here's why.

Just arsenic the sanction suggests, Vanguard's Mid-Cap ETF holds a clump of mid-cap stocks -- companies typically with marketplace capitalizations of betwixt $2 cardinal and $10 billion. While this peculiar money is meant to bespeak the show of the 290 constituents of the cap-weighted CRSP US Mid Cap index, you'll apt spot a akin show from the S&P 400 MidCap index and immoderate of the exchange-traded funds that reflector it.

More important to buy-and-hold investors, however, you should marque a constituent of holding a presumption successful this ETF. It's got a agelong way grounds of outperforming the S&P 500, aft all. True, the S&P 500 has performed uncharacteristically good since 2020 acknowledgment to tiny fig of the world's already-biggest technology stocks becoming dramatically bigger by starring the artificial quality revolution.

Yet, going each the mode backmost to its instauration backmost successful 1991 the S&P 400 MidCap scale has easy outpaced its ample headdress counterpart.

^MID Chart

^MID information by YCharts

This superior show really makes sense. Mid-sized companies are successful the saccharine spot of their existence. They're past their wobbly start-up years, but haven't yet reached their afloat maturation stride that tin lone beryllium achieved with scale. In astir cases, their champion maturation lies ahead, often leveraged by being successful the close spot astatine the close clip with the close merchandise oregon service.

Artificial quality robotics outfit UiPath precocious grew its mode into the S&P 400, for instance, portion Robinhood Markets and Carvana some precocious outgrew the S&P 400 to go members of the S&P 500. In each 3 cases, their respective marketplaces were acceptable for thing new.


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