If a Stock Market Crash Is Coming, I'm Loading Up on This ETF Without a Second Thought

Stubbornly high inflation. Rising interest rates. Highly valued tech stocks and a heavily hyped artificial intelligence (AI) trade. Conflict in the Middle East. Gloomy consumers. There are many reasons for investors to feel cautious about the future of the U.S. stock market.

But even if we're heading for a stock market downturn -- or even a stock market crash -- there's one exchange-traded fund (ETF) that I'll keep buying no matter what.

The Vanguard MorningstarTotal Stock Market ETF (NYSEMKT: VTI) is a big part of my portfolio. I'm going to just keep buying shares of this fund, no matter what happens next with the day-to-day moves of the stock market.

Let's look at why this Vanguard ETF is a good move for long-term investors, even if stocks take a short-term tumble.

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Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF: 3,531 stocks, 14.53% annualized returns for 10 years

The Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF ranks as one of the best Vanguard ETFs and holds $2.3 trillion of net assets. This fund is popular because it offers an extremely well-diversified portfolio of U.S. stocks, including large caps, mid caps, and small caps. If you want to buy "all the stocks" in America, this fund gives you easy diversification at an ultra-low cost -- its expense ratio is only 0.03%.

The entire U.S. economy is represented in this ETF, with top sector holdings including technology (41% of the fund), industrials (12.5%), consumer discretionary (12.3%), financials (10%), and healthcare (9.1%).

In the past 10 years, this ETF has delivered average annual returns of 14.53% per year. And over the past 25 years since the fund's inception in May 2001, the Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF has delivered annualized returns of 9.43% (net asset value).

Why I'm buying VTI in 2026...and beyond

If you're worried that the U.S. stock market has gotten too tech-heavy, this fund at first glance might not seem like the best choice. Its top 10 stock holdings are all major tech names like Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon.

But buying VTI is not the same as buying a tech-heavy index fund like the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF. The Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF holds thousands of other stocks along with the biggest tech names. Even if the AI boom turns out to be overheated and tech goes into a correction, other sectors and themes (like small-cap stocks or value stocks) might pick up the slack.

The stock market goes up and down for all kinds of complex reasons, but in the long run, this broadly diversified portfolio of publicly traded U.S. businesses tends to go up. No one knows for sure which stocks or sectors will be the big winners, but I believe that the entire U.S. stock market will deliver lucrative, wealth-building, inflation-beating returns in the long run. That's why I keep buying shares of the Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF as part of my long-term investments -- every month, every payday.

Ben Gran has positions in Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.