[MagicWishMonkey]

All of the vanguard funds have graphs charting the returns year over year since the fund was created.

The ones that crashed and burned in the recession are the ones most likely to provide a high return in a bull market, there are plenty that were largely unaffected by the recession (mostly securities) but you won't benefit as much from a bull market with those.

I have a blend of different funds.

[encoderer]

All ETFs and mutual funds have this, I believe it's SEC mandated. Regardless, your points may or may not be true but how something performs in a bull market isn't strictly the point. You need to average your returns over a long timeline.

There is nothing special about Vanguard ETFs, and even if you feel you are diversified there's an old saying that in a severe downturn the correlation of everything goes to 1. So most likely, in a downturn, everything you hold will go down, even if you feel you're diversified. This of course is not a law, just a probability.

(And just as a helpful FYI, both stocks and bonds are securities)