VOO, QQQ, VTI, SCHD and VGT: What Actually Separates Them

If you only ever learn one thing about investing, learn this: most professional fund managers fail to beat a boring index fund over a decade. That is not an opinion. It is the finding of the S&P SPIVA scorecard, year after year, across most major markets and most categories.

So the real question is not whether to own an index fund. It is which one - and, more usefully, whether the differences between them matter as much as the marketing suggests.

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Growth of $10,000 over ten years for VOO, QQQ, VTI, SCHD and VGT

Date	VOO	QQQ	VTI	SCHD	VGT
Jan 2016	$10,000	$10,000	$10,000	$10,000	$10,000
Apr 2016	$10,274	$9,910	$10,275	$10,363	$9,676
Jul 2016	$10,357	$9,453	$9,956	$10,013	$10,197
Oct 2016	$10,015	$10,181	$10,214	$9,852	$10,056
Jan 2017	$10,147	$10,354	$10,080	$10,208	$10,419
Apr 2017	$10,283	$11,150	$11,040	$9,987	$11,570
Jul 2017	$10,553	$11,212	$11,470	$11,150	$11,821
Oct 2017	$11,512	$12,368	$11,545	$10,948	$13,370
Jan 2018	$12,008	$13,237	$12,040	$11,278	$14,300
Apr 2018	$11,931	$12,899	$11,691	$11,069	$13,932
Jul 2018	$12,352	$13,534	$11,805	$10,894	$14,145
Oct 2018	$11,739	$13,027	$10,980	$10,666	$14,925
Jan 2019	$12,265	$13,223	$11,470	$10,948	$15,010
Apr 2019	$12,552	$14,896	$12,375	$11,042	$15,647
Jul 2019	$13,573	$16,138	$12,557	$11,695	$18,483
Oct 2019	$14,694	$17,238	$13,926	$12,744	$19,421
Jan 2020	$15,693	$18,263	$14,368	$13,208	$20,907
Apr 2020	$16,785	$19,558	$14,801	$12,824	$22,913
Jul 2020	$16,231	$22,540	$15,780	$14,284	$26,563
Oct 2020	$17,194	$24,190	$16,130	$14,116	$29,414
Jan 2021	$18,122	$27,237	$17,462	$14,613	$32,197
Apr 2021	$19,673	$29,489	$18,450	$15,259	$33,438
Jul 2021	$21,086	$30,430	$19,092	$15,810	$35,697
Oct 2021	$22,179	$32,459	$19,780	$17,774	$39,298
Jan 2022	$22,396	$32,361	$20,854	$18,137	$38,588
Apr 2022	$21,575	$29,782	$19,893	$17,075	$34,990
Jul 2022	$19,932	$26,358	$18,505	$17,794	$30,635
Oct 2022	$18,785	$23,634	$17,324	$17,276	$29,431
Jan 2023	$18,659	$23,468	$16,985	$17,223	$28,528
Apr 2023	$19,821	$25,207	$17,405	$17,061	$30,041
Jul 2023	$21,400	$30,354	$19,591	$17,626	$36,220
Oct 2023	$21,656	$31,600	$20,168	$16,745	$39,055
Jan 2024	$23,085	$35,636	$21,419	$17,303	$41,309
Apr 2024	$25,568	$36,668	$22,549	$17,868	$42,741
Jul 2024	$25,598	$37,766	$22,358	$17,115	$44,956
Oct 2024	$27,395	$42,760	$25,347	$18,043	$48,032
Jan 2025	$28,030	$43,408	$25,877	$18,621	$51,025
Apr 2025	$29,652	$46,171	$26,095	$18,480	$50,190
Jul 2025	$29,278	$44,700	$26,498	$17,983	$51,320
Oct 2025	$29,436	$46,827	$26,037	$18,204	$55,518
Jan 2026	$29,875	$47,074	$26,889	$18,568	$57,715
Apr 2026	$30,224	$47,044	$28,437	$18,144	$59,538
Jun 2026	$30,835	$50,068	$27,952	$19,099	$60,659

The five funds that matter

The case for starting here at all rests on a well-measured finding: S&P's SPIVA scorecard has repeatedly found most active managers failing to beat their benchmark over a decade.

VOO: Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The default. 500 of the largest US companies, a 0.03% expense ratio, and the benchmark every other fund is measured against. If you are not sure, this is the answer.

QQQ: Invesco QQQ. The Nasdaq-100: heavier in technology, lighter in banks and oil. It has outperformed the S&P 500 over the last decade, with noticeably bigger drawdowns in bad years - roughly –33% in 2022 against the S&P's –19%.

VTI: Vanguard Total Stock Market. Owns essentially every listed US company, small caps included. Performance tracks VOO closely because the giants dominate both, but you are buying the whole haystack.

SCHD: Schwab US Dividend Equity. The income pick. Screens for quality companies with at least ten consecutive years of dividends. It will usually lag growth-heavy funds in bull markets and hold up better in ugly ones.

VGT: Vanguard Information Technology. A pure technology sector bet. The strongest ten-year performer on this list, and the most volatile. A conviction holding, not a core one.

The overlap problem nobody mentions

Here is the thing that surprises people who own three of these at once: they are largely the same companies.

The S&P 500 is market-cap weighted, so its largest holdings are the mega-cap technology names. The Nasdaq-100 is dominated by the same names. VGT is almost entirely those names. VTI holds them too, just diluted by several thousand smaller companies that barely move the needle.

Buy VOO, QQQ and VGT together and you have not diversified. You have bought Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia three times, at three different concentrations, while paying three expense ratios and telling yourself you are spread out.

What actually separates them

Every figure below - expense ratio, holdings, turnover - comes from each fund's own prospectus, filed publicly and searchable through the SEC's EDGAR database. Verify current numbers there rather than trusting any article, including this one.

Three things, in order of importance:

1. Concentration. VGT is essentially all technology, QQQ roughly half, VOO and VTI around a third, and SCHD deliberately underweights it. Your technology exposure is the single biggest driver of how these funds behave - in both directions.
2. Expense ratio. All five are cheap (0.03%–0.20%). It matters less than people think in the short run and more than they think over thirty years, but it is still second to concentration.
3. Dividends. SCHD yields several times what the growth funds pay. In a taxable account that is a yearly tax bill; in a retirement account it is compounding fuel. The right answer genuinely depends on which account you are using.

What the fee difference is actually worth

The gap between 0.03% and 0.20% sounds like a rounding error, and over one year it is. Over decades it compounds.

On a $100,000 balance growing at 7% a year for thirty years, the difference between paying 0.03% and 0.20% annually works out to roughly $38,000 in the low-fee fund's favour - not because the fund performs better, but purely because less is skimmed each year and the remainder keeps compounding.

That is worth knowing. It is also worth keeping in proportion: choosing QQQ over VOO changes your outcome far more than a 0.17% fee difference ever will, because it changes what you own.

Which one fits which investor

If you…	Consider	Why
Want one fund and no decisions	VOO or VTI	Broad, cheap, benchmark performance
Can tolerate deep drawdowns for growth	QQQ or VGT	Higher concentration, higher variance
Are closer to needing income than growth	SCHD	Yield and lower drawdowns, at the cost of upside
Already own a mega-cap-heavy portfolio	International or small-cap	Adding another US large-cap fund adds little

The honest limits of ten-year returns

Every ranking in this article describes a specific decade - one in which US mega-cap technology was the best-performing asset class in the world. Funds concentrated in it therefore look brilliant.

That is not evidence they will continue to. It is evidence they were concentrated in the right thing during the window we happened to measure. There have been full decades where the S&P 500 delivered roughly nothing and where value, international, or small caps beat growth handily. Ranking funds by trailing ten-year return systematically flatters whatever just worked.

Where this leaves you

A reasonable default that has served millions of investors: VOO or VTI as the core, QQQ or VGT as a satellite if you want more growth and can stomach the drawdowns, SCHD if you are closer to needing income than growing it.

Pick one core fund. Add money to it on a schedule. Resist the urge to own all five, because owning all five is mostly owning the first one with extra steps. For more on why steady contributions beat timing, see dollar-cost averaging.

Not investment advice. Price returns exclude dividends and taxes unless stated. Expense ratios and holdings change - verify current figures with the fund provider before investing. Past performance does not guarantee future results.