This Is My No. 1 Recommended Vanguard ETF to Buy in 2026

• A caller survey suggests that investors are divided connected their views astir the market's future.

• By keeping a semipermanent outlook, you tin interest little astir what stocks volition bash successful 2026.

• The close concern tin bounds hazard portion inactive gathering life-changing wealthiness implicit time.

• 10 stocks we similar amended than Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF ›

As we caput into 2026, galore investors are having mixed feelings astir the banal market. While 37% of U.S. investors consciousness optimistic astir the adjacent six months, according to the astir caller play survey from the American Association of Individual Investors, astir 35% consciousness pessimistic.

Regardless of wherever you judge the marketplace is headed adjacent year, continuing to put consistently is 1 of the astir effectual ways to physique semipermanent wealth. Even if stocks instrumentality a crook for the worse successful 2026, staying successful the marketplace for galore years tin trim the interaction of immoderate short-term volatility.

The close concern is cardinal to surviving marketplace downturns, however. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are a fantastic enactment for galore people, and there's 1 Vanguard ETF I personally ain and highly urge heading into the caller year.

Nobody knows wherever the marketplace volition beryllium successful the adjacent six oregon 12 months. Stocks could proceed surging, oregon we whitethorn beryllium inching person to the adjacent recession. No substance what happens, though, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (NYSEMKT: VTI) tin assistance support your portfolio.

The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF is simply a wide money encompassing the full U.S. banal market. It contains 3,527 stocks, ranging from small-cap to megacap and everything successful between. Covering each sectors of the market, it's arsenic diversified arsenic you tin get erstwhile investing successful equities.

Because it aims to travel the show of the marketplace arsenic a whole, this ETF is incredibly apt to past periods of volatility. The marketplace itself has survived each downturn it's ever faced, and there's a precise bully accidental that inclination volition continue.

In fact, not lone has the marketplace pulled done recessions and crashes, but it's besides thrived implicit time. Since its inception successful 2001, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF has experienced important short-term volatility -- from the dot-com bubble burst to the Great Recession to the carnivore marketplace passim 2022, and more. Yet, it's inactive managed to gain full returns of much than 484% successful that time.

Historically, this ETF has earned an mean complaint of instrumentality of 9.25% per year -- which is astir successful enactment with the market's mean implicit the past 50 years.