Billionaire Israel Englander 1000X'd His Stake in a Vanguard ETF That's Been a Surefire Moneymaker, According to History

Although we're entering the heart of earnings season, the quarterly filing of Form 13Fs with regulators can be just as telling for investors. A 13F provides investors with a concise snapshot of the stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that Wall Street's savviest money managers have been buying and selling.

Billionaire Israel Englander of Millennium Management is among the most-watched of all fund managers. Millennium almost always hedges its positions with call and put option contracts, resulting in the fund holding in excess of 5,600 positions at the end of March. But one unhedged position of Englander's is particularly noteworthy: the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC)-tracking Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO).

Billionaire Israel Englander oversees a sizable portfolio at Millennium Management. Image source: Getty Images.

Millennium Management's billionaire boss piled into the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF

Since the start of 2014, Millennium Management's 13Fs show it has held a relatively small position in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF in most quarters, but that this stake had never topped 84,152 shares... until now.

Between Dec. 31 and March 31, Englander more than 1000X'd his fund's position in this time-tested ETF from 1,011 shares to 1,016,744 shares! In other words, he made a direct wager that the value of the benchmark S&P 500 would rise, which, thus far, has been a prescient call.

Though there are well over 4,000 ETFs for investors to choose from, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF is special in the sense that, historically speaking, it's been a surefire moneymaker.

Every year, the analysts at Crestmont Research refresh a data set that calculates the rolling 20-year total return, including dividends, of the benchmark S&P 500, dating back to the start of the 20th century. Even though the S&P wasn't officially incepted until 1923, Crestmont was able to track the total return of its components in other major indexes as far back as 1900.

Crestmont Research examined 107 rolling 20-year periods (1900-1919, 1901-1920, and so on, to 2006-2025) and found that each one delivered a positive annualized total return. Hypothetically (since the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF wasn't launched until September 2010), if an investor had purchased an S&P 500-tracking index at any point between 1900 and 2006 and simply held for 20 years, they would have generated a positive return every time!

The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF comes with another clear advantage: its net expense ratio.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEMKT: SPY), which is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF's largest competitor by total assets, has a net expense ratio of 0.0945%. This means $0.945 of every $1,000 invested goes toward fund management fees and expenses.

Meanwhile, the new apple of Israel Englander's eye has a net expense ratio of only 0.03%. For institutional money managers putting significant capital to work in index funds, this six-basis-point difference can add up over time.

Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.