With the end of 2025 right around the corner, now is an ideal for investors to evaluate opportunities for 2026 and position accordingly. Of course, it's human nature to look for home runs -- assets that deliver massive returns in short order. Sometimes, those fat pitches are hiding in plain sight.
Investors are often encouraged to think individual stocks are the best, perhaps only, home-run opportunities available, but there are plenty of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that aid market participants on their quests to build wealth. A good place to start is examining ETFs focusing on growth stocks. Enter the Vanguard Communication Services ETF (VOX +0.21%).
This $5.8 billion sector ETF behemoth can be considered an aggressive, tactical play. Vanguard itself describes VOX as "aggressive," implying some level of risk, but that risk has been rewarded. Over the past three years, this Vanguard ETF returned about 125% compared to 85% for the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF.
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VOX's "secret sauce" could be tasty
VOX holds 121 stocks, but it's not diversified in the traditional sense. In fact, VOX epitomizes concentration risk -- an issue that's in the limelight as a small number of megacap growth stocks take on outsize percentages of various cap-weighted indexes and funds.
Just three stocks -- Meta Platforms (META +0.30%), Alphabet Class A shares (GOOGL 0.49%) and Alphabet Class C shares (GOOG 0.54%) -- combined for 45.52% of the ETF's roster as of Sept. 30. Undoubtedly, that's a highly concentrated portfolio, but it's worked in investors' favor in recent years because the parents of Facebook and Google have been among the leaders in the megacap growth complex.
NYSEMKT: VOX
Key Data Points
VOX is also ideal for capital-constrained investors. As investors gain experience, they come to realize that price and value are two distinct concepts, but there's no getting around the fact that with Meta trading north of $700 and with Alphabet Class A shares residing above $250, many retail investors can't build sizable stakes in either of those names, let alone both. With VOX, investors get a more-than-adequate proxy on those two storied stocks -- one with long-term home run potential -- for just $185 a share.
VOX is cheap in another way
Based purely on price, the cost of admission associated with VOX is "cheap" relative to direct ownership of Alphabet and Meta, but the fund is cost-efficient in other ways.
As is the case with nearly all other Vanguard ETFs, VOX is inexpensive to own. Its annual fee is just 0.09%, or $9 on a $10,000 investment. That's way below the 0.82% charged by comparable funds, according to Vanguard data.
VOX's low cost of ownership is material to investors who are approaching the ETF with long-term views, which is arguably smart because the fund has delivered the goods over multiyear holding periods.
'V' is for VOX and victory
Expecting that VOX will double in 2026 may be asking a lot, but another double over time is certainly possible. Investors would do well to keep things in perspective and expect solid though not spectacular returns from the ETF into year-end and over the course of 2026.
Part of the perspective with VOX includes remembering what one is buying. Investors are getting a quality proxy on some high-growth companies with deep artificial intelligence (AI) ties. And don't overlook the quality component. No company outside the financial services sector has more cash on hand than Alphabet's $95.14 billion -- and with $47.07 billion in cash, Meta ranks 11th among all domestic companies (sixth excluding financials) on that metric.
