Vanguard VOO ETF hits $1 trillion in assets, an industry first

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Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF became the first exchange-traded fund in history to surpass $1 trillion in assets, the investment firm confirmed Wednesday, according to Reuters.

The fund, which trades under the ticker VOO, crossed the threshold on Tuesday. A $1.7 billion inflow in the latest session pushed assets above the mark, according to Bloomberg. Crossing $1 trillion puts VOO in rare company — only a handful of open-ended mutual funds have ever reached that level, and no other ETF has come close.

At 0.03%, VOO's annual expense ratio is one-third that of State Street $STT -1.19% Investment Management's rival SPDR S&P 500 ETF, which charges 0.09%, according to Reuters. Sitting in second place among S&P 500-tracking ETFs is BlackRock $BLK -2.76%'s iShares Core S&P 500 ETF, which matches VOO's 0.03% fee and has accumulated $860 billion in assets. State Street's fund, a 1993 trailblazer that effectively opened the ETF market to investors, trails with $785 billion.

"This is a key milestone," Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, told Reuters. "Investors continue to turn to low-cost broad market exposure to gain access to the S&P 500 using VOO."