When browsing through the holdings of Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ), it is easy to be attracted by some of the big specialized REIT names operating in the datacenter space.
However, commercial REITS also have a high weight at 41.7%. Moreover, taking the wider view, the ETF is comprised of the shares of 182 different real estate stocks and has a weighted average market cap of $35.5 billion.
Figure 1: VNQ's holdings on a sector and weight basis.
Source: etf.com
VNQ uses the simple market-capitalization-weighted index whereby each component is allocated a weight