How do I choose a S&P 500 index fund?
Consider looking for S&P 500 index funds with low expense ratios, several years of operation and a healthy amount of assets under management (AUM). The longer a fund has existed, the more information you have about its performance history.
Consider looking for S&P 500 index funds with low expense ratios, several years of operation and a healthy amount of assets under management (AUM). The longer a fund has existed, the more information you have about its performance history.
You can't directly invest in the index itself, but you can buy individual stocks of S&P 500 companies, or buy a S&P 500 index fund through a mutual fund or ETF. The latter is ideal for beginner investors since they provide broad market exposure and diversification at a low cost.
You can invest in an S&P index fund through several different investment firms. The only real difference between them is the expense ratios (aka fees). Higher fees mean less of a return for you.
In other words, if you invest $100 in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY -0.5%), you'll own a tiny portion of all 500 companies in the S&P 500 Index. You get instant diversification and an investment with a long history of making money for anyone who can hold for a decade or longer.
Warren Buffett has consistently recommended an S&P 500 index fund because it tracks a group of businesses that "are bound to do well" over time. The S&P 500 has been a profitable investment over every rolling 20-year period in history, and it returned 1,720% over the last 30 years.
Since fees are the difference-maker in returns, the Fidelity 500 Index Fund stands out as the best-performing S&P 500 index fund. It has the lowest expense ratio of the top funds, so its returns are slightly higher than other top S&P 500 index funds.
For instance, say your investments are earning a 12% average annual return compared to 10% per year. If you're still investing $100 per month, you'd have a total of around $518,000 after 35 years, compared to $325,000 in that time period with a 10% return.
You can become a millionaire by investing $500 per month consistently for almost 30 years. This is a low-effort strategy, but you can achieve this goal even faster through the right combination of individual stocks. Should you invest $1,000 in Vanguard S&P 500 ETF right now?
Putting your money into S&P 500 ETFs only might limit your returns to some degree. But in exchange, you'll have a lot less work on your hands. You won't have to research individual stocks for your portfolio and keep tabs on their performance quarter after quarter.
Should I put all my 401k in S&P 500?
Diversification is an important factor, and you'll want to balance having too much in one type of asset. For example, many experts recommend having an allocation to large stocks such as those in an S&P 500 index fund as well as an allocation to medium- and small-cap stocks.
You only need one S&P 500 ETF
You could be tempted to buy all three ETFs, but just one will do the trick. You won't get any additional diversification benefits (meaning the mix of various assets) because all three funds track the same 500 companies.
Experts agree that for most personal investors, a portfolio comprising 5 to 10 ETFs is perfect in terms of diversification.
A well-constructed dividend portfolio could potentially yield anywhere from 2% to 8% per year. This means, to earn $3,000 monthly from dividend stocks, the required initial investment could range from $450,000 to $1.8 million, depending on the yield. Furthermore, potential capital gains can add to your total returns.
The truth is that most investors won't have the money to generate $1,000 per month in dividends; not at first, anyway. Even if you find a market-beating series of investments that average 3% annual yield, you would still need $400,000 in up-front capital to hit your targets. And that's okay.
S&P 500 5 Year Return is at 79.20%, compared to 90.27% last month and 44.37% last year. This is higher than the long term average of 44.93%. The S&P 500 5 Year Return is the investment return received for a 5 year period, excluding dividends, when holding the S&P 500 index.
The best equity index fund is the ones that track the index as closely as possible. Ideally there should not be any difference between the index and the fund return but practically, there would be a slight deviation based on the time of tracking, weightage in the stock invested or rebalanced.
If you're new to investing, you can absolutely start off by buying index funds alone as you learn more about how to choose the right stocks. But as your knowledge grows, you may want to branch out and add different companies to your portfolio that you feel align well with your personal risk tolerance and goals.
The 90/10 strategy calls for allocating 90% of your investment capital to low-cost S&P 500 index funds and the remaining 10% to short-term government bonds. Warren Buffett described the strategy in a 2013 letter to his company's shareholders.
S&P 500 Index Versus Nasdaq 100 Performance
Nasdaq 100 has outperformed S&P by a wide margin. The average 10-year return of Nasdaq 100 over these 15 years was around 9%, while that of S&P 500 was about 5%.
What is better S&P 500 index fund or ETF?
The Bottom Line. Both index mutual funds and ETFs can provide investors with broad, diversified exposure to the stock market, making them good long-term investments suitable for most investors. ETFs may be more accessible and easier to trade for retail investors because they trade like shares of stock on exchanges.
The best way to invest in the S&P 500 is to buy exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or index funds that track the index. There are differences between these two approaches that we'll examine below, but in either case, these funds offer extremely low costs and superior diversification.
And for a 20-year investment, returns have been 100% positive. But given the possibility for short-term stock market volatility, you should only invest in an S&P 500 index fund if you don't expect that you'll need your money for around five years.
| Rate of return | 10 years | 30 years |
|---|---|---|
| 4% | $72,000 | $336,500 |
| 6% | $79,000 | $474,300 |
| 8% | $86,900 | $679,700 |
| 10% | $95,600 | $987,000 |
Assuming an average annual return rate of about 10% (a typical historical average), a $10,000 investment in the S&P 500 could potentially grow to approximately $25,937 over 10 years.
