Vanguard Mega Cap 300 Growth ETF

If you’re partial to huge firms with solid growth credentials, you’ll love this fund.

If it’s true that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, then large-company growth stocks could bear fruit for a long time to come. Consider Apple, the nation’s quintessential growth stock. It has been a torrid performer, climbing 87% over the past year, and it is now the world’s largest company in terms of stock market capitalization.

Apple’s ascent has helped boost Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, the proxy for large-company stocks. Over the past 12 months through April 5, the index returned 7.3%. By contrast, the small-company Russell 2000 index fell 2.7%. Yet big-capitalization stocks still appear to be attractively priced. The average price-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 is 13, based on estimated 2012 profits, compared with a P/E of 20 for the Russell 2000.

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Nellie S. Huang
Senior Associate Editor, Kiplinger's Personal Finance

Nellie joined Kiplinger in August 2011 after a seven-year stint in Hong Kong. There, she worked for the Wall Street Journal Asia, where as lifestyle editor, she launched and edited Scene Asia, an online guide to food, wine, entertainment and the arts in Asia. Prior to that, she was an editor at Weekend Journal, the Friday lifestyle section of the Wall Street Journal Asia. Kiplinger isn't Nellie's first foray into personal finance: She has also worked at SmartMoney (rising from fact-checker to senior writer), and she was a senior editor at Money.