Warren Buffett built his fortune by buying businesses with durable competitive advantages at reasonable prices and holding them for decades. Now well into the second half of 2026, tracking these systematic frameworks has become more consequential than ever. The first half of the year delivered a harsh sorting mechanism across value strategies, severely punishing asset classes that over-indexed on bloated tech moats while rewarding pure cash flow and low-fee stability.
MOAT: The Purest Expression of the Moat Philosophy
VanEck Morningstar Wide Moat ETF (NYSEARCA:MOAT) is the most direct institutional translation of Buffett’s core idea: buy companies with sustainable competitive advantages at a discount to fair value. Morningstar’s equity analysts assign economic moat ratings based on structural advantages including switching costs, network effects, intangible assets, and cost advantages. MOAT holds only companies that earn a “wide moat” designation and trade at attractive valuations relative to Morningstar’s fair value estimates.
That dual filter separates this fund from a generic quality ETF. A company can have a wide moat and still be excluded if it trades above fair value. The index rebalances quarterly, rotating toward names that have become more attractively priced. This creates a systematic buy-low discipline that mirrors Buffett’s insistence on margin of safety.
The portfolio holds roughly 50 to 60 names, with no single position exceeding about 3%. The sector mix skews toward information technology at 27%, consumer defensive at 18%, and healthcare at 18%. The tech weighting reflects the modern reality that software businesses often carry the most durable moats. Current holdings include Fortinet, Zoetis, and Danaher alongside Microsoft and NVIDIA.
The fund carries a net expense ratio of 0.46% and total net assets of $11.71 billion as of mid-July 2026. After suffering a steep decline in the early part of the year, the fund has recovered to a year-to-date gain of roughly 2.5%. That early-year stumble had an identifiable cause: Morningstar’s Q1 data revealed that U.S. wide-moat stocks underperformed broader allocations, with high-profile holdings like Microsoft and Meta suffering double-digit drawdowns as artificial intelligence shifted from a universal growth catalyst into a more selective competitive force.
COWZ: Buffett’s Cash Flow Obsession, Systematized
Buffett has long emphasized free cash flow as the true measure of a business’s earning power, preferring it over reported earnings that accounting choices can distort. Pacer US Cash Cows 100 ETF (NYSEARCA:COWZ) operationalizes that preference by screening the Russell 1000 for the 100 companies with the highest free cash flow yield and rebalancing quarterly.
The result is a portfolio that systematically gravitates toward businesses generating more cash than they need, often trading at depressed prices relative to their cash production. The fund’s quarterly rebalances also shift its sector composition meaningfully as valuations change. As of late June 2026, the top holdings included Booking Holdings, Lowe’s, HCA Healthcare, Uber, T-Mobile, Verizon, Altria, AT&T, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, names that collectively generate substantial cash relative to their market prices.
Assets stood at approximately $17.85 billion as of late June 2026, a decline from earlier in the year as value-oriented outperformance attracted some rotation back into growth funds. The fund’s dividend yield runs near 2.23%, and its trailing price-to-earnings ratio of roughly 15 reflects the portfolio’s deep-value character. COWZ’s rules-based screening generates a fundamental profile that diverges sharply from the broader market, anchored by a high free cash flow yield that cushions the portfolio during momentum-driven selloffs.
The tradeoff is sector concentration risk. Because free cash flow yield tends to cluster in certain industries, the portfolio can carry heavy exposure to energy or healthcare depending on where valuations sit. When those sectors lag, COWZ underperforms regardless of its fundamental merits.
OMAH: Direct Access to Berkshire’s Portfolio, With an Income Layer
VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (NYSEARCA:OMAH) mirrors the largest holdings of Berkshire Hathaway’s equity portfolio, adds Berkshire itself as a direct position, and overlays a covered call strategy to generate monthly income targeting a 15% annual yield. The fund is not affiliated with Berkshire Hathaway or Warren Buffett.
The holdings read like Berkshire’s 13-F filings. Apple sits near the top alongside Berkshire itself, followed by American Express, Occidental Petroleum, and Chevron. The financial sector dominates at roughly 39%, consistent with Buffett’s long-standing preference for financial services businesses with durable competitive positions. Consumer staples account for another meaningful slice.
The covered call overlay is the distinguishing structural feature. By writing calls against equity positions, the fund generates premium income that supplements dividends, allowing it to pursue that 15% income target. The cost of this approach is capped upside in strongly rising markets, since the calls obligate the fund to sell shares at the strike price if the underlying rallies through it.
OMAH has grown substantially since its March 2025 launch. Assets reached approximately $891 million as of early July 2026, up from $689 million in mid-May, reflecting continued investor appetite for options-income strategies. The most recent monthly dividend was $0.24 per share, paid in late June 2026, and the fund’s year-to-date total return has climbed to roughly 9.1% including those distributions. The expense ratio of 0.95% is the highest on this list, a meaningful drag relative to the passive alternatives here.
VTV: The Low-Cost Foundation for Broad Value Exposure
Vanguard Value Index Fund ETF (NYSEARCA:VTV) does not try to replicate Buffett’s stock-picking. It provides broad, passive exposure to large-cap value stocks at a cost consistent with his long-standing preference for low fees. Buffett has repeatedly argued that most investors are better served by low-cost index funds than by attempting to select individual stocks or pay active management fees.
The fund tracks the CRSP US Large Cap Value Index and holds 326 companies. As of mid-2026, its largest position is Micron Technology at roughly 4.2%, followed by JPMorgan Chase at about 2.9%, Berkshire Hathaway at 2.8%, ExxonMobil at 2.3%, and Johnson and Johnson at 2.1%. The sector breakdown is more balanced than the other funds here, with financials at 21%, healthcare at 15%, and industrials at 14%.
The expense ratio of 0.03% is the defining feature. At that cost, essentially nothing is consumed by fees over time, a compounding advantage that grows more significant over multi-decade holding periods. Total net assets have expanded to approximately $254 billion as of mid-July 2026, cementing VTV’s status as one of the largest ETFs in existence. The fund has delivered a year-to-date gain of roughly 15%, making it the strongest performer among the four funds covered here over that period.
The tradeoff is breadth. VTV holds every large-cap stock that qualifies as value by CRSP’s methodology, including companies with no particular competitive advantage. An investor seeking only businesses with durable moats or exceptional cash generation will find the portfolio diluted by mediocre names that simply screen as cheap.
Which Fund Fits Which Investor
Each fund connects to Buffett’s investment principles through a different mechanism. MOAT applies Morningstar’s moat framework with a valuation filter and quarterly rotation, making it the closest systematic approximation of Buffett’s stock-picking philosophy. COWZ screens for free cash flow yield across the Russell 1000, shifting sector exposure as valuations change and delivering a portfolio profile that looks nothing like the broad market. OMAH holds Berkshire’s largest equity positions directly and uses a covered call overlay to generate monthly income, with the tradeoffs of capped upside and the highest expense ratio on this list. VTV offers broad, low-cost exposure to large-cap value at 0.03% annually, with a portfolio that includes the full range of companies meeting CRSP’s value criteria and the deepest liquidity of the four.
Editor’s note: This pass updated assets under management for all four funds to reflect figures current through July 2026, corrected VTV’s YTD return to approximately 15% and its top holdings to reflect Micron Technology’s move to the largest position, revised MOAT’s YTD return to roughly 2.5% (from the earlier -4.1% figure tied to mid-May data), updated OMAH’s AUM to approximately $891 million and its most recent monthly dividend to $0.24 per share paid in June 2026, and revised COWZ’s AUM to approximately $17.85 billion alongside updated top holdings as of its most recent quarterly rebalance.
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