Vanguard Lowers Fees On Six ETFs

In the latest move in the growing ETF price war, Vanguard, the third-largest U.S. ETF issuer, announced it is paring fees on six of its ETFs, including the popular Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF VWO. VWO, the world's largest emerging markets ETF by assets, will see its expense ratio reduced to 0.22% from 0.27%, making it even cheaper than the Schwab Emerging Markets Equity ETF SCHE, which features an expense ratio of 0.25%. VWO has been able to steadily pilfer assets from the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund EEM by offering lower fees. The Vanguard MSCI Pacific ETF VPL will see its expense cut to 0.14% from 0.16% as will the Vanguard MSCI European ETF VGK. Vanguard's Total World Stock ETF VT will see its fees lowered to 0.25% from 0.3%. The FTSE All-World ex-U.S. Index VEU goes to 0.22% from 0.25% and the FTSE All-World ex-U.S. Small Cap VSS will have an expense ratio of 0.33% down from 0.4%. The new expense ratio for VSS also undercuts the comparable Schwab fund, the Schwab International Small Cap Equity ETF SCHC, which has expenses of 0.35%. Vanguard had total ETF assets of $154.56 billion as of Feb. 24, according to data compiled by IndexUniverse.com.