Quick Read – MOAT is down 1.5% year to date in 2026 while its fair-value discipline forces it to trim winners in a momentum-driven market. – Over 10 years MOAT matched SPY nearly dollar for dollar at roughly 250% each, but the 5-year gap reflects avoiding overpriced mega-cap…
ch. – MOAT suits patient investors as a 5 to 15% portfolio sleeve, though its 0.47% expense ratio and lumpy distributions make it a poor fit for income seekers. – Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway around the castle-and-moat metaphor, and the VanEck Morningstar Wide Moat ETF (NYSEARCA:MOAT) tries to package that idea into a single ticker. Through the first half of 2026, MOAT is down 1.3% year to date while the S&P 500 has climbed 9.2%, which is exactly when the MOAT thesis gets tested
The pitch rests on durable competitive advantages compounding through any environment. Quality bought at the wrong price can still sting, and the 2026 numbers prove it. What MOAT is buying The fund tracks the Morningstar Wide Moat Focus Index, which screens U.S. equities for companies Morningstar analysts rate as having a wide economic moat across five sources: From that pool, the index picks roughly 50 names trading at the steepest discounts to Morningstar’s internal fair-value estimate, equal-weights them, and rebalances quarterly in two staggered sub-portfolios.
So the return engine has two stages. First, a qualitative judgment that a business can earn excess returns on capital for two decades or more. Then a valuation discipline that trims those businesses when prices run past fair value and rotates into cheaper moats.