VCIT or VCLT: Billionaire Ken Fisher Bets on One Top Vanguard ETF

While no investment comes with guarantees, the long-term performance of U.S. businesses has proven consistently resilient. It is therefore unsurprising that Vanguard has developed a range of ETFs designed to capture that enduring strength.

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By spreading exposure across many holdings within a single vehicle, ETFs provide an added layer of diversification. This structure helps reduce the impact of any single underperforming investment, even if such risks are relatively limited among large-cap U.S. companies.

Two Vanguard ETFs dive into this pool of American success: the **Vanguard Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF **VCLT +0.79% ▲ and the **Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF **VCIT +0.43% ▲ .

Billionaire investor Ken Fisher has a history with both, and his latest moves reflect his current thinking on which one is best suited for the current times.

With roughly $7.5 billion in assets under management, VCLT wouldn’t be mistaken for one of Vanguard’s larger ETFs. It invests in corporate bonds with maturities of at least 10 years, offering the potential for higher returns than short- or intermediate-term corporate bonds.

Indeed, despite a low expense ratio of 0.03%, VCLT’s beta of 0.15 implies the potential to outpace the market. That hasn’t been playing out of late, however.

Over the past few months and years, VCLT has consistently underperformed the broader market. The ETF is down about 1.5% over the past 12 months, even as equities have remained in a sustained uptrend for much of that period.

Against this backdrop, Fisher reduced his exposure to VCLT, selling 368,835 shares – or roughly 62% of his position – in Q4 2025.

Shorter-term bond yields tend to fluctuate less, and ETFs focused on these securities are generally less volatile. That is reflected in VCIT, whose beta of 0.07 is significantly lower than VCLT’s.

VCIT is also a much larger fund, with nearly $65 billion in assets under management. Despite its size, it maintains a low expense ratio of just 0.03%. While its recent returns are modest, the ETF has managed to edge into positive territory with low single-digit gains over the past year.

There is a clear correlation between equities and the bond market, which offers a useful lens into Fisher’s current thinking. When stocks perform well, investors often rotate out of bonds, which can push yields higher as demand for these more conservative assets declines.

Based on these moves, Fisher does not appear overly concerned about an imminent downturn in U.S. equities. Instead, he seems to favor VCIT’s shorter-duration exposure in the current environment, having added 3,339,026 shares during the most recent quarter, a position now worth ~$277 million.

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