The Same Stocks, Bought Twice: How Much Popular ETFs Really Overlap
The same stocks, bought twice
Most investors buy a second or third ETF to spread their risk. We took the 15 most widely-held<br>US ETFs, read their official holdings, and did the look-through math. The short version: a lot<br>of "diversification" is the same mega-caps, wearing different tickers. Here's the data — and how<br>to check your own portfolio in ten seconds.
99.6%VOO and IVV overlap — two S&P 500 funds, basically identical<br>88%VOO and VTI, the two most-owned ETFs, share 502 stocks<br>12/15popular ETFs that hold Broadcom and Texas Instruments<br>28%of a classic three-fund portfolio sits in just ten stocks
1. Some "different" funds are the same fund
Overlap here is weight-based: for every stock two funds share, we take the smaller of the two<br>weights and add them up. It answers a plain question — what share of your money ends up in<br>the same stocks either way? Here's how the popular pairs score.
VOO + IVV 99.6%<br>VOO + VTI 88.1%<br>VUG + SCHG 79.1%<br>VUG + QQQ 59%<br>VOO + SCHG 53.2%<br>VOO + QQQ 50.7%
VOO and IVV are both S&P 500 funds, so 99.6% is expected —<br>yet plenty of people hold both, thinking two providers means two bets. The more surprising ones<br>are the growth funds: VUG and SCHG are 79% the same basket , and half of QQQ is<br>already inside a plain S&P 500 fund.
2. The stocks you own no matter what
Cut it the other way — which companies show up across the most funds? Of the 15 popular<br>ETFs we looked at, a handful appear in two-thirds or more of them. Buy almost any mix and you're<br>buying these again.
Texas Instruments (TXN) 12/15<br>Broadcom (AVGO) 12/15<br>Apple (AAPL) 11/15<br>Microsoft (MSFT) 11/15<br>Intuit (INTU) 11/15<br>Fastenal (FAST) 11/15<br>Costco (COST) 10/15<br>Analog Devices (ADI) 10/15
Note what's not here: no single household name dominates the list the way you'd guess.<br>It's semiconductors and quiet compounders — Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Fastenal, Costco —<br>riding along inside index after index.
3. Even a "three-fund diversified" portfolio
Take the combination people reach for when they want to feel spread out: an S&P 500 fund,<br>the Nasdaq, and a dividend fund — VOO + QQQ + SCHD , equal amounts in each.<br>Three funds, three different ideas. Run the look-through and 123 stocks turn out to<br>be held by more than one of them, and your ten biggest positions still add up to<br>28.1% of the whole portfolio :
Company% of your moneyHeld via NVIDIA5.42% VOO + QQQApple4.76% VOO + QQQMicrosoft3.52% VOO + QQQAmazon2.74% VOO + QQQAlphabet2.14% VOO + QQQCisco1.95% VOO + QQQ + SCHDMeta1.90% VOO + QQQTesla1.89% VOO + QQQ
NVIDIA alone is over 5% of the portfolio, arriving through both VOO and QQQ. The dividend fund<br>(SCHD) is doing the real diversifying — it's the only one of the three pulling in names the<br>other two don't.
Why this keeps happening
Almost every popular ETF is cap-weighted : the bigger the company, the more of<br>it the fund holds. Since the same dozen mega-caps are the biggest companies in nearly every<br>slice of the US market, they float to the top of nearly every fund. Stack two cap-weighted funds<br>and you don't get twice the diversification — you get a heavier bet on the same giants. It isn't<br>a flaw in any one fund; it's arithmetic that only shows up when you look through the<br>wrappers to the stocks underneath.
Check your own portfolio
Every number above came from a free tool anyone can run. Enter your funds and dollar amounts and<br>you'll see your true combined exposure — which stocks you really own, and how much:
See the VOO + QQQ + SCHD breakdown live →
Prefer it in the language of the old Morningstar Instant X-Ray? That tool was retired in 2025;<br>the free Morningstar Instant X-Ray alternative<br>rebuilds its stock-intersection view.
Methodology & reuse
Holdings come from official issuer files and SEC filings — no third-party estimates. Overlap is<br>the sum of the smaller weight across every shared holding, matched by security identifier;<br>portfolio look-through weights each fund by its dollar amount and sums each stock's weight<br>through. Full detail is on our methodology page, and every figure is<br>reproducible in the calculator. Numbers are a snapshot as of July 2026 and shift as<br>holdings update.
Journalists and writers: you're welcome to cite these figures with a link to this page. The<br>underlying pair and holdings data is browsable at overlapcheck.com/etfs and<br>/stocks if you want to check a specific fund or company.