IVV

Fourteen_Werewolves

It'll be in the top 10 of the SP500, no index i know of will skip it. You'd have to rebuild the index in aggregate by selling all your $IVV or whatever and buying all 499 stocks individually.

Machine8851

VT performs worse than an sp500 index fund such as IVV and VOO

fozzy71

Yeah, you are likely right, but I didn't need the extra noise and volatility for a new holding that was still <1% of my portfolio at this point. I am focused on consolidating and reducing tickers. My new goal is 50% IVV, 25% AVNM, and 25% for 3-4 factor ETFs and 1 or 2 sector ETFs.

bosch1817

I know what IVV is and how they work the picture was just an example reference. It seems like a stretch to me that this can all just be inflation driven. It very well could be but this trend has been going on for some time now since the GFC. I’m sure it’s a big part of it I guess. Just seems strange that it could be the only reason for equities in general to just keep going up. Not even really sideways. Just persistent YoY growth.

Emergency-Ticket5859

You need to learn what IVV is to start with before investing in it It tracks the S&P500 - the top 500 companies in the US. The top 500 are continually refreshed so the best/most profitable companies are represented. Top companies earn profit, and don't pay it all out as dividends. This gets reinvested and grows the asset base (ie: increases value) Inflation nominally increases the price of everything, this flows through to companies, products and share price. Investors in equities demand a risk premium to ride out volatility and risk of loss. This is typically a few percent above the risk free rate. All this combined --> equities are structurally biased upwards. Since all the above (apart from inflation) doesn't really apply to commodities, stonks only go up, generally, if they're good.

fozzy71

I am in the process of going 100% AVNM for my exUS core to let them figure out the weights, but my largest core is IVV instead of VT. I was previously doing 1/3 each of VXUS, IDMO, and DFIV for my exUS sleeve.

SufficientSorbet9844

The only dividend timing I would try is moving IVV to VOO to SPY in Jun, because they're the exact same thing.  You're just getting 3x the dividends for passive index investing

notapersonaltrainer

>It's not about the 4% float. It's about the valuation. How it works is that once SPCX is added into QQQ, it will use it's market cap (everyone valuing it at 1.8T) ~ 4.5% of the total QQQ. Let me test your understanding. Imagine if SpaceX just released 10 shares (or 0.0...01% of their float). In your view, the managers of QQQ, SPY, VOO, IVV, etf would all have to fight to make it ~3-4% of their fund (roughly the size of Amazon), regardless of the tiny float, simply because theoretical valuation of the other shares is $1.8T? Are you stupid? If it worked how you think it works every company would IPO with an itsy bitsy float and get valued at quadrillions of dollars, lol.

notapersonaltrainer

>It's not about the 4% float. It's about the valuation. How it works is that once SPCX is added into QQQ, it will use it's market cap (everyone valuing it at 1.8T) ~ 4.5% of the total QQQ. Let me test your understanding. Imagine if SpaceX just released 1 share. In your view, the managers of QQQ, SPY, VOO, IVV, etf would all have to fight for that one share to make it ~3-4% of their fund (roughly the size of Amazon) simply because the non-available shares are valued at $1.8T? Are you stupid?

shortvol_trader

The logic is directionally right but the execution risk is real. CSPX and VOO track the same index but they're different instruments with different prices, different option multipliers, and different liquidity profiles. The hedge isn't perfect — basis risk exists between them. The bigger problem is practical: if your VOO call gets assigned, you need to deliver VOO shares you don't own. Your CSPX doesn't cover that obligation directly. You'd have to sell CSPX, convert currency if needed, buy VOO, and deliver — all while the market is moving against you. If liquidity on CSPX options is the problem the cleaner solution is SPY or IVV which track the same index, have deep liquid options markets, and you can use them as your covered call vehicle directly instead of cross-instrument hedging. What's your reason for holding CSPX specifically — is it tax treatment or account restrictions?

SetRestart

Did I make a mistake going IVV and not SPY

GuidetoRealGrilling

95% IVV, 5% DRAM moving forward

Thiccjuicymilfz

Hi, New to this investing business. Cliffs: Investing in ETFs and will hold for 20+ years. Please rate… NDQ, VAS, DHHF and IVV Thinking of replacing IVV with VGS? Thoughts? Much appreciated.

Andrew_Higginbottom

$7k into an ETF like IVV then split the $600 into 3 different stocks (find an extra $100) The ETF is to park most of your money into something making slow and (relatively) safe money until you are more skilled/more confident into making faster money. Treat the $600 as training money that you are willing to lose on your skills improvement education. The best thing you can do for your long term investing is to lose some of that $600 at the start, as there is no better fire up your butt way to learn than to be losing money 😄 (it's what worked for me) ..and January 2024-2025 my portfolio made 107% ..not saying that's a regular, just an example of how losing money made me better ..at not losing money 😄 ..and making money ..and that if I just parked it all in an ETF it would have been up only 15% in that period. If you think losing 80% of the $600 on your learning curve is difficult to handle, think about how much an education course would cost you to sign up to. In comparison, 80% loss on that $600 to get you skills to eventually make way more is money well spent ...and quite frankly, its a bargain.

ElonMuskTheNarsisist

Why not add IVV while you’re at it lol

SufficientSorbet9844

maybe diversification outside the U.S. atleast for now. I'm holding 70% IVV, 30% SCHF to access Japanese, Canadian, European, etc equity that is relatively cheap and actually outperformed the SP500 last year. But this is probably not a longterm strategy.

Pragmatic_synic

I had a historic year in 2025. +400k in my IRA aggressive stock trades on HOOD RDDT CRWV VRTV big gains on my brokerage S&P IVV account. I’m a seasoned investor, trader and speculator. It’s plausible but do you think you are lucky or smart? I was lucky in 2025. Lucky seasons are not common. Check your ‘self’ egomaniac

Azurik81

It doesn't you a lot to get you triggered, huh? And that was ne being nice. Yet, you're so "knowledgeable" that you make rookie statements like "it doesn't hold its value when it drops" and "doesn't have the share price like SPY and IVV". This isn't assumptions. It came out of your mouth. What makes rookies worse if when rookies are ignorant enough that they don't even see they're rookies.

prattbatt

We’re talking about pennies. I’m not gonna trip over pennies. I’ll rather have BlackRock instead of vanguard. That simple for me. You repeating yourself about tracking the s&p500 is redundant. I’m not your buddy, me saying I’d rather own IVV instead of VOO doesn’t mean I’m new to investing. I’d rather own institutional than retail. Keep making assumptions “buddy”

prattbatt

I’d rather have IVV than VOO. Some people prefer great value and that’s okay

prattbatt

Exactly, tracks the same index but can’t hold its value when it drops and doesn’t have the same price of SPY OR IVV. Fees? I believe IVV has the same fees as VOO. You’re not paying crazy amount of fees for a bland ETF nor are you paying management fees. So that doesn’t cross my mind but maybe it does for great value shoppers.

prattbatt

Even then, it’s minimal bps. VOO doesn’t hold it value well compared to SPY or IVV. Might be a Reddit cult

prattbatt

Why don’t yall just buy SPY or IVV? Genuinely curious why people flock this

dudeatwork77

I think I’ll hedge the risk by diversifying into IVV, VOO and a bit of SPLG

bobdevnul

The term the IRS uses is substantially identical, not same type. Brokers will not flag wash sales to the IRS for different tickers. For example, VOO and IVV have different managers, different tracking errors of the index, different expense ratios, etc. They won't be considered a wash sale.

InvestingNerd2020

No tax issues in a Roth IRA. Sell it and buy into the ETF VT. For the "wash sale" to exist, you need the same type of funds and the fund being replaced needs to be at a loss in a taxable account within 30 days. FXAIX ≠ VT. Example of a wash sale in a taxable brokerage account would be VOO having a bad year for a first year investor, and getting replaced with IVV under 30 days.

D_Pablo67

Investing is best done as a steady, patient habit. Come up with an amount you can invest every week or every month, and stick to it. Open a Roth IRA, and put the steady investment into an S&P 500 ETF. Your three choices are VOO, SPY and IVV. Keep it simple. Focus on consistency.

Charming_Squirrel_13

not financial advice, but I rely on IVV, QQQM and IXUS to provide the ballast for my portfolio. but my largest individual holdings are AMD, NVDA, PANW and CRWD. I work with data scientists and they clued me in pretty early about what was going on. going forward, I'm interested in seeing how biotechnology, nanotechnology and robotics play out, especially with any potential AI tailwinds, so I'm keep an eye on those.

D_Pablo67

Investing is best done as a steady, patient habit. Invest $1,000 per week into an S&P 500 ETF like VOO, SPY or IVV. Pick one, I like VOO. Investing on a schedule protects you from being hurt by wild market swings and builds the habit of saving and investing. You want at least your first $20k in a S&P 500 ETF. Once you reach that goal, you can explore individual stocks or just keep going on VOO or QQQ, which is the NASDAQ 100.

FairMongoose5583

when someone says “VOO and chill”, they mean to buy into the broad market and let it sit for a while. this of course is assuming they have decades to chill. also, VOO here is interchangeable with any broad market ETF. for some people it’s the S&P 500 (SPY, VOO, SPYM, IVV, SWPPX, among others). some people it’s the broad US market like VTI, some people it’s the broad world market like VT. the catchphrase is more investing advice than anything

guiltypleasure33139

There is a running joke that actually very true: Time in market beats timing the market. You have 20k to invest, then schedule 5 investments of VOO or IVV, each investment for $4000, do this 1 time per month over the next 5 months. This will get you in the habit of savings. Set your account to dividends re-invested. this helps with the compounding. I have been doing this since the 80's ( mutual funds ) and in the 90's SPY came out and I was doing it weekly, I've seen massive ups and thumping downs. My S&P 500 cost basis is still less than $200 per share. I get a ton load of new stock every dividend.

Andrew_Higginbottom

I wold put it all on IVV, but that's me.

LuolaLogarius

IVV

UpDown

I’ve never had much tech exposure. I’ve been all in on small cap value since I earned my first dollar. What I find fascinating is that I have not underperformed IVV through this whole ai bubble, and in fact I’ve outperformed slightly. To outperform an ai bubble without ai is pretty cool.

buckeye25osu

As others have said, VOO, or SPY, or IVV. They are all going to be the same if you're going the SP500 ETF route. Park your 20K there and then automatically add 1K each month for the next 25 years and it would be worth $1million at 8%, about 1.3 million at 10%.

Andrew_Higginbottom

Low volatility and high yield is a bit of an oxymoron. High volatility going skyward brings high yield. No volatility is stagnation (sort of). Put it all in IVV and walk away..

Senior_Power_7040

Agree, for income it is decent. I've been running a very similar strat on IVV for years (i.e. sell puts to accumulate, the sell calls and/or straddles on longs and cash). My experience is I end up getting called away early in cycles and end up just selling puts for extended periods of time that expire OTM. It's nice income but mostly underperforms buy and hold. Also with the index ETFs there is very little premium OTM so I tend to sell ATM which leads to the call assignments frequently. I don't like rolling out time/strikes because doing so is usually much lower margins and locks up capital so I tend to just take assignments and move on.

DuckSmash

I would allocate some away from VOO and into SPY. You should also make room to put 5% in IVV

_caraaaward

for smaller amounts SPY-tracking etfs like VOO or IVV have the same exposure but slightly different option chains. mini SPY options (XSP) are cash-settled and 1/10th the size which helps alot. if you're open to perps instead of leaps, markets.xyz runs 24/7 with index multipliers up to 50x.

polymanAI

VOO is the same exposure with tighter spreads on some strikes. RSP (equal-weight S&P) gives you cheap leaps with less top-heavy tech concentration. IVV if you want the lowest premiums.

SirGlass

Currently however the IRS does not consider them the same You can exchange IVV for VOO or something and the IRS will not treat it as a wash sale Could the IRS tomorrow decide it really is sure but in the past they have not

tired_ani

No, I don’t play around with my Roth and 401k which is fully in VT + 10% AVUV and a target date fund respectively. I only buy individual stocks in my Taxable and HSA. My Taxable is 25% IVV too, so I am referring to selling some of that 25% to fund my above direct picks.

Fickle_Radish2418

I have a question. to work out TWR would I essentially look at what both would have done in the past 12 months if I put the same amount in them? eg if I put $1000 in RIO on the 8th April 2025 it would have increased 40% where if I put $1000 in on IVV on the 8th April 2025 it would have only increased 12% am I looking at this correctly?

Jealous_Bookkeeper20

Understood. DCA is a solid execution strategy for smoothing out entry points, but it's important to distinguish between execution and evaluation. TWR is the standard for measuring the 'skill' of your underlying selection (like Rio vs. DHHF) because it removes the noise of when you added fresh cash. Even if you're DRP-focused, knowing if your concentrated picks are organically outperforming a broad index like BGBL/IVV is key to justifying that concentration risk over the long term.

Jealous_Bookkeeper20

If you are moving towards growth, BGBL or IVV are both solid for diversifying away from the ASX concentration. Since RIO/TLS are already \~47% of your portfolio, adding more tickers like QAU might just clutter the portfolio without providing significant risk-adjusted benefit. Focusing your $1000 on DHHF or BGBL to smooth out that idiosyncratic risk seems more robust. On the TWR point -- it is less about dollar gains and more about understanding if your active picks (RIO/TLS) are actually generating alpha over a simple total market index after accounting for the timing of your DRPs.

Fickle_Radish2418

I have * **RIO:** 25.56% * **TLS:** 21.74% * **IOZ:** 15.51% * **NDQ:** 13.49% * **DHHF:** 11.39% * **GHHF:** 10.70% Looking at adding QAU unless someone has another recommendations and trying to decide between IVV and BGBL I won't sell RIO, TLS, GHHF but could be convinced. Im looking at putting another $1000 in and wondering where? Thank you

MONGSTRADAMUS

I have been looking at dfus as a good cheap option , that should be close to vti with out the ipos and filters for profitability . I don't even know what I should do with my vti in my brokerage accounts, just start buying dfus going forward. Also isn't SP500 supposed to not allow ipos for 6-12 months, so VOO/IVV/SPYM should be somewhat safe to keep holding some of this stuff I am still trying to wrap my head around.

ServerTechie

Well my 401K is a boring target fund, not a lot of choices there. But it's been DCA'd for a long time with ups and downs before, no sense in flipping the script now. Depending how long you've been putting money in S&P that's probably the way to go, just stay the course on a reoccurring schedule. For my personal Roth though, I've been debating selling IVV in favor of FNDX. FNDX can outperform in a bear market, it uses RAFI Fundamentals to select its stocks. I've had excellent performance with RAFI for international equity: FNDF and FNDE. I'm also annoyed that Nasdaq changed the rules for the SpaceX IPO, so if S&P changes their rules too that might be the incentive I need to switch to FNDX.

Uniquename34556

Looks like you’re investing in a lot of individual stocks. Standard advise is invest in an index fund in a Roth IRA. You can open one up on vanguard or fidelity and just put it in VOO, IVV, or SPY. These are called ETFs and follow the S&P 500 which are the top 500 companies in the US. It’s self managed (think way smarter than us in general) and they only take $3 for every $10,000 you invest (expense ratio) per year. It’s ridiculously cheap. Historically the S&P grows 10% a year (some years are lower some are higher). This is your low risk option. Mid risk option include other ETFs that focus on growth, tech stocks, etc. High risk is you learn about and play around with options (puts and calls basically betting that a stock will go down or up within a certain amount of time). It’s a glorified roulette table. This is gambling and many of lives and loved ones have been ruined by this. I’m simplifying things but I hope you get the idea.

myrrhsea

If permanent life insurance is that thing where you put money into it, *more* as you get older, and then you can pull it out as a cash benefit, I'd say run to the hills. These grow more slowly than the market average and get progressively more expensive as you age. The main selling point is that it's cheap now when you're young and healthy (and naive). If the best selling point is a sense of urgency, is it a great idea? If they're selling you relief from potential FOMO, is that the same as relief because you made good choices managing your money? Guess what is equally cheap, doesn't get more expensive to contribute to as you age, and historically yields higher returns? Furthermore, you can manage it yourself and avoid fees for managed or guided investing. SCHB, VTI, ITOT, or VOO, SCHX, IVV, SPYM, etc. aka. the total U.S. market or the S&P 500. And you don't need all of those, you can just pick one. Or pick VT for the whole world market and chill.

meandjarvis

If this is money you won't need for 10+ years, VOO is a massive upgrade over USFR's declining yield. Don't overthink it, people who "continue researching better options" often end up sitting in cash for years while the market runs away from them, or end up worse off than simply putting money in VOO. Keep 6-12 months expenses in something safe like USFR as an emergency fund, move the rest into VOO, and stop looking at it. I spent years cherry-picking stocks thinking I could find something better than the index. Eventually quit all that and just started DCA'ing into IVV (same thing as VOO basically). It's been about 2 years now, market went up and down, and my return is on track for the historical \~10% annual average. But the best part isn't the return, it's the peace of mind. I don't check tickers anymore, I don't stress about earnings calls, I just let it run. That mental bandwidth alone was worth the switch.

D_Pablo67

It is important that you invest. Start by building up a base with an S&P 500 ETF like VOO, SPY and IVV. Get that to $20,000 and use it as a solid portfolio foundation. Just let it grow. Then, look at some higher growth stock ETFs and individual stocks with long term earnings power. For ETF, I like Wedbush Dan Ives AI Revolution (IVES). My largest individual stock holdings are NVIDIA, Comfort Systems, Crowdstrike, Broadcom, and Goldman Sacks. I periodically buy on pull backs, but mostly let them grow. If you want to gamble after doing this, try deep in the money call options timed around an event like an earnings report or election.

D_Pablo67

Exchange Traded Funds were developed after mutual funds. Index funds are ETFs based on an index. S&P 500 ETFs are VOO, SPY and IVV. NASDAQ 100 ETF is QQQ. S&P 600 ETF (profitable small caps) is IJR. Russell 2000 ETF (small caps) is IWM.

da6id

GameStop was removed from SP500 VOO back in 2016 and never made it in since then during the short squeeze. VOO requires 4 quarters or GAAP positive earnings so it's possible SpaceX doesn't get there for many years unless they manage to get VOO/IVV rules changed

meandjarvis

Yes, start now. At 18 with even $50/month into an S&P 500 index fund, you'll have more at 40 than most people who started at 30 with triple your income. Time is the one advantage you have that money can't buy. If I were you, I wouldn’t pick individual stocks, buy SPY, IVV or VOO, set up auto-deposit, and forget about it. The app matters way less than the habit.

blueberrybasil1

I bought more IVV too along with some AMZN.

prattbatt

Bought more IVV, Apple and Nvidia

Gimme_All_The_Foods

You can definitely do that. I personally use ETFs since they have a lot more options. Here's a nice table to bookmark: [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Tax\_loss\_harvesting#Substitute\_funds](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Tax_loss_harvesting#Substitute_funds) While the IRS has yet to formally state what they consider substantial identical, I personally try to avoid switching from a fund like VOO to IVV since they follow the same index. Luckily there's a lot of very similar funds that track different indexes, so I TLH to those first. You don't need to wait any days either. For example, if you purchase 10K of VTI and it drops 3K, you can immediately sell it and buy something like VOO and reap the harvest with no issues.

meandjarvis

QQQM = betting that tech dominance continues forever. VOO/VTI = betting that the US market broadly continues. For 20+ years, QQQM's concentration in tech is both its strength and its risk. If AI delivers, you win big. If it's the next dot-com, you eat a lost decade. I go with IVV (S&P 500) rather than QQQ. Even though I am very optimistic and believe in tech dominance, but still I'd like to have some balance to make me sleep better. IVV has enough tech exposure already. Diversification isn't about maximum returns. It's about surviving whatever comes.

meandjarvis

60% VOO, 20% VXUS, 20% QQQM, you're double-weighting tech since those giants are already in VOO. I went a different direction: IVV (S&P 500) + non-US equities + gold + BTC. Less overlap, more genuine diversification across asset classes, not just geographies.

johyongil

Whoops. I was thinking IVV. SPY is full replication with sampling ability.

PralineTechnical5685

YES, FOOL is for fools. No risk management that's asinine watching a blue-chip like FMC go from $112 to $12 with buy, hold no matter what. Now you need 933% run to break even. Profit taking exit strategy: none, Buy QQQ, IVV, VUG, etc. ETF's

closehaul

I did a very similar thing at a similar age but with IVV. Except I’d just do a lump sum wherever I had it. Honestly I wish I had invested more regularly instead of all at once. No one can predict the future, but I think it’s a pretty good idea.

theappisshit

IVV and chill

OddDescription4523

I'll go ahead and repeat what everyone else says, namely, don't invest in individual stocks, invest in broad index funds, that's the smarter way to go. Now, with that out of the way, here's what I did when I took over from an "automated broker" (literally just me paying whatever company it was a fraction of a percent to buy nothing buy a broad index fund, in this case IVV) and started buying my own stocks. MISTAKE #1: I got a subscription to Motley Fool. As far as I'm concerned, Motley Fool is even worse than listening to Jim Cramer. It is actively out to make money by making you lose money. They tell their subscribers "this is the next big thing! Remember that time in 1993 when we told people to buy something and now it's up 10,000% This could be that too!" and then when the price is pushed up, they sell, or the opposite "Be afraid, this is going to crash!", get people to sell, so they can buy on the cheap. Fortunately, it only took a month or so for me to realize/learn that their advice is shit and they're a complete scam. I switched to subscribing to Seeking Alpha, and I trust its advice MUCH more, to my benefit. If you subscribe, which I think costs $200/year(?), you can get 3 scores for a stock/ETF: an average of the ratings of a wide number of wall street investors, an average of the ratings of Seeking Alpha contributors based on their own analyses, and a score from their proprietary purely quantitative algorithm that takes all human hunches and intuitions out of things. I pretty much only pay attention to the Quant score, but MISTAKE #2 was learning not to \*just\* trust the Quant score. Often, it sees astronomical performance in small, like very small, companies, and has them with a score of like 4.98/5.00, but these are very risky and frequently drop hard, so you have to learn what makes for a reasonably plausible good Quant score vs. a good Quant score that you shouldn't trust. Other than that, I read a lot of the analyses that SA publishes about companies that I'm considering, and - important - use Investopedia to look up any and all words or acronyms I'm not familiar with. I swear, investing is as bad as the military when it comes to having 87 bazillion acronyms, so be ready to learn what P/E, PEG, EPS, etc. mean and what they signify. Beyond that, my main advice is to start small. If your Roth IRAs already have significant funds in them, put/leave most of it in index funds and only give yourself a small portion of your portfolio to learn to pick individual stocks with. Because you almost certainly will lose money before you learn enough that, with luck, you'll start making money. I think I got as low as my OVERALL PORTFOLIO being down somewhere between 25 and 30% because of bad decisions before I had learned enough to start making better investment decisions, managing risk, knowing which sectors of the market are more cyclical vs stable, how I wanted to balance between value and growth stocks, and so on. I've made up all that loss and come well into the black by now, but thank god that I didn't have very much money to invest in those first several years when I was making mistake after mistake. If I'd have as much income to invest then as I have now (I was in grad school), I'd have lost a shitload more money. So, basically, if you're set on making your own individual stock picks, think of the money you invest for the first year or two as tuition in the school of hard knocks as you come to know what you don't know, so that you can then go learn about it. If that sounds unacceptable to you, then just swallow your pride, don't think you can do better than the market, and stick to broad index funds.

Chalk1980

I sold all my IVV 25K last year on accident. Re bought immediately now I have a big ass W next to them lol. It just sits there reminding me that I have to slow the fuck down. Didn't seem to have a huge impact on tax return. Like others said you got to pay it eventually.

Awkward-Painter-2024

But IVV still up 0.06% for the year... if the index had dropped 10%, this war would been wrapped up just like that. I dunno, none of this makes sense.

EvangelineRain

I did it on margin to supplement my income (or now as a substitute for my income), so I view it the same as income from employment. The money I consider to be my savings is in IVV, and I hold that long term (in theory, I’ve had a few hiccups). I’m not sure I get your point about wash sale rules. The loss would immediately offset any gain, since it increases your basis above cost basis.

Gloriam_Insights

1. Yes, if you want minimum headache with solid returns, just keep investing into the S&P 500. It has shown strong results over the last few decades and will most likely continue. Of course, nobody can guarantee that — it's possible that America gets pushed off the pedestal as the leading economy, and as a result the S&P becomes less relevant while other countries and indices outperform. But realistically, predictions like that are nearly impossible to make. 2. As for growth ETFs and individual stocks — it helps to think of it as a risk scale. If we're only talking about stocks, here's roughly how it breaks down from least to most risky: 1. Global ETFs (VT, VXUS) - widest diversification across countries, continents, and sectors 2. Broad market ETFs (VOO, SPY, IVV) - S&P 500 and similar, strong track record 3. Sector/narrow ETFs (QQQ, ARKK, SOXX) - more growth potential, but more volatile 4. Individual stocks - closest thing to a casino. Nobody can guarantee with 100% certainty that a company won't change direction, replace its CEO, or run into unexpected problems. The general rule: the younger you are, the more it makes sense to lean toward the riskier end of this scale. If those bets pay off — great. If not, you still have decades until retirement to recover. But the higher the potential growth, the higher the risk. That tradeoff is always there. The good news is you don't have to pick just one. You can combine them — keep the S&P 500 as your core and add a smaller allocation to something more aggressive. The key is deciding how much risk you're actually comfortable with.

D_Pablo67

So long as you are investing for your son on a regular basis, FXAIX, VOO, SPY and IVV are all good choices. Once you get the value over $20,000, you may want to set aside half your new investments to a handful of individual stocks that have excellent earnings growth.

AUBURN520

SPY is only for options traders because of the liquidity. for long term investors, VOO or IVV give you the exact same market exposure with 1/3rd the fees.

HoneyBadger552

100% IVV. read 3 books, coffeehouse invest and boggleheads guide to investing, and liars poker

_AnecdotalEvidence_

IVV

D_Pablo67

If you are concerned about underperforming the S&P 500, then you do not need an investment advisor, you need to buy an S&P 500 ETF, such as VOO, SPY or IVV. Most investment advisors underperform the S&P 500 over the long term.

OddDescription4523

Probably the main thing to consider right now is your tax burden. I think your instincts are right that you don't want to just leave it as is; you probably want to consolidate it into safer (or at least less volatile) options. But, if you sell what you have, you'll have to pay taxes on it, and at 22 that could be a real problem. This is some important information: if you've held a stock for at least a year and a day, you only pay capital gains tax on it, which is generally 15%. So let's say you wanted to get rid of all your Tesla, so you sold roughly $60k worth of that stock. Google tells me TSLA traded at about $13/share on March 1, 2016, and it's now about $412 a share. (God bless Grandma.) To make it easy, let's just say you bought at $13/share and sell at $413/share, so you make $400 profit per share on 145 shares (that would be about $60k). Your gains would be $400 x 145 shares = $58,000. Since these are long-term gains (you held them more than a year), you'd owe 15% in taxes, which is $8,700. I don't know about you, but when I was 22, being surprised with an $8700 tax bill would have been a disaster. So, if you sell off a good portion of your portfolio so that you can put it in more cautious choices, be sure to hold some of the proceeds from the sale back to cover your tax burden. If there's anything in there that you've held for *less* than a year, then proceeds from the sale would count as ordinary income, in which case it just adds onto whatever you've earned in wages for the year. That might be a reason to hold onto some things so you could split the sales across two different years so you don't get hit with the full tax burden in one go. But, then of course you're risking a major drop in price while you hold it. You've just got to decide for yourself what level of risk you want to take vs. tax burden. In terms of what to put your portfolio into once you've sold the old holdings (or however much of them you're going to sell), you probably want to buy broad index-based ETFs. ETFs that track the S&P 500 as a whole like VTI, or ones that broadly track big companies (called "large-cap", meaning their market value is at least $10B) like VOO or IVV are usually where you want to go to get wide exposure. Right now is a bit of an odd time, though. There are some signs that we're in a bubble, and bubbles pop, and when they do, the whole market goes down hard, so having diversified doesn't protect you. No one can know for certain if we're in a bubble, or if we are how long before it pops, but just know that there is some reason to consider doing something other than the standard advice of putting it all in something like VTI or VOO. One option is to put a portion in an ETF that only holds things not based in the U.S., since that's where the bubble is if there's a bubble at all. VXUS is the ETF I'd recommend if you want to go that way. Another option is to just hold a bunch of it in cash in a high-yield savings account (HYSA) for a while. You could probably earn close to 3.5% interest in a HYSA while waiting to see if the bubble bursts or if fears of a bubble calm down. If there is a bubble and it bursts, then you've got your cash available to buy up equities on the cheap - much better to buy VOO or VTI after it's dropped 25%, right? Of course, if fears of a bubble are wrong, then things will have continued getting more expensive while you were only getting 3.5% interest on your money, so in that case you will have missed out on 6 months or 12 months or whatever that your money could have been growing faster. The last paragraph was trying to lay out (a) what people would normally suggest, (b) why that might not be best right now, and (c) what to consider given the worries of a bubble. Here, I'll give you my concrete recommendation. To let you know where I stand, I think we are in a bubble, so I've been selling most of the stocks that I've held for more than a year and moved the money into a HYSA. That being said, I've moved myself from about 97% stocks/3% cash to about 80% stocks/20% cash, so I'm still heavily invested and not willing to pay the extra taxes for short-term holdings just to get out now now now. If you don't want to learn about stock investing and just want a concrete plan, here's what I would do with a $120k portfolio that I wanted to make more cautious. First, sell off all individual stocks that have been held over a year. Things held a year or less, I'd hold onto them until they reach that year-and-a-day threshold then sell them. I'd put probably 80% of the money I now have in a HYSA, 10% in VOO and 10% in VXUS. Then every month, I'd buy like $3k worth of VOO and the same of VXUS, so I'm slowly moving the balance of cash to equities. If there's a crash and things become really cheap, jump on it to buy VOO and, if there are a couple big name companies you want to get, go ahead and buy a couple thousand dollars worth of them. Otherwise, just keep doing those monthly purchases until you're at something like 80% equities/20% cash. After that, when you have extra income available, buy more VOO, but always keep enough in cash so that if some disaster struck and you were suddenly without a job or place to live, you could afford to cover the necessities for 6 months. For the money you've invested, don't even look at it. The market will go up and down, but unless things go catastrophically different than they ever have before, the long-term trend will be up, so don't let yourself worry about a down week or even month; just know that when you're in your late 60s, you'll see just how much your money has helped you make more money!

PrestigiousWheel9587

Tesla has done well but fluctuates a lot. You should consider selling if you’re prone to bad decisions when in turmoil or not educated in investment. It’s down 20% ish from peak but still up 20% from 1 year. Not best time to sell but again: expect fluctuations Buy barefoot investor. Learn about ETF. Pick a few like IVV and invest in that. It’s basically a diversification strategy, a way to invest in a basket of shares instead of having to pick winners yourself.

HoneyBadger552

no gold. i get the emotional sense for it when times are turbulent but no more than 5% there. FIVA for your international stuff. IVV is a stellar choice

JohnBrownsErection

If you're capable of buying fractional shares, and many brokers allow this these days, share price of an ETF doesn't really matter unless you intend to trade options. Thats the neat part about buying a broad market index - if you throw $500 at VOO or SPY or IVV, which all track the same index, you're essentially buying the same portion of every underlying company.  IMO go with VT while you learn - it's essentially buying the whole world in one fund. Hard to go wrong there. 

HoneyBadger552

this is true, FMTM is still new and need proving. If you want a straight SP500 etf, then IVV is stellar. .03% expense ratio

ServerTechie

Well first of all, if your company matches a percentage of 401K contributions, always contribute that matching percentage at minimum since it’s free money. If you make combined less than $236K combined, you can contribute $7500 each to a personal Roth accounts, so be sure to max that out. $236 - $246k limit is $7000 each Roth, after that it’s not allowed. If you exceed $246K, then better to max the company 401K Roth if applicable. Then again, if you’re making that kind of money then chances are you’re better off with traditional IRA given your higher tax bracket. The advantage of a personal Roth thru a retail investment firm like Fidelity is typically more control than 401K plans. As far as diversifying I recommend a portfolio like this: 45% IVV/VOO (S&P500), 15% AVUV (active managed small cap value), 30% FENI/FNDF/VEA (international developed market), 10% FNDE (emerging market). As you age, you should steadily add & increase BND allocation, to create a glide path that protects the portfolio from drawdowns.

BobtheChemist

Investing part of the cash will generate more future wealth, and you can always keep part in cash (SGOV, etc) for emergencies. If you put part into growth, like IVV, QQQ, SPY, IYM, etc, some into dividends like VIG, VYM, SCHD, or such, and then keep adding to it as you can. But you will earn 2000+ a year with any luck, and still have some cash for emergencies. But it will not ay the entire rent any time soon.

CallMeBao

In my 5 years of having a Roth Ira, my highest yielding stock was IVV, everyday $2 investment, gained me 3x than the other recommended stocks like VOO, BND, VEA, VONG and so and so.

Zann77

If I was going to yolo into anything, I’d buy SMH or SOXX. The semiconductors have done fantastically well for me-I’ve owned FSELX for well over 20 years and am up enormously. I also own NVDIA, ASML, and TSM, because I like owning some individuals and am addicted to the gains to be made in semis. Need to rebalance, badly. I have also owned APP for a while. Be wary, it’s extremely volatile. I’ve bought and sold, made some money, but am currently underwater. Consider building a foundation in VOO or SPY or IVV. Risk is exciting, but having a good amount in steady eddies (that grow) can take the edge off when APP drops $100 over a couple days.

jw30m

Loaded question. Like the OP, your current age and time horizon are really important to understand for investing for retirement. In general, I prefer buying broad market-based index funds like VOO, IVV, VTI, or similar, because of the long-term rise in US stocks as a whole. But that's a gross oversimplification. I would prefer an ETF like SGOV over CDs, for it's liquidity. Many brokers over something similar for cash sweeps.

HoneyBadger552

could make it easy with VTI or even IVV. If you want risk, throw in SPMO or some emerging countries/markets ETF

Phuffu

For 99% of investors, it doesn’t matter if you own VOO, IVV, or FXAIX. For all intents and purposes, they are the same thing.

SkahtiKaarz

I wait until the go long term then write calls. If I end up losing them I buy IVV.

moldyjellybean

Does Fidelity IVV do similar?

Varrooom

Since you got laid off, I would transfer the 401k into a Fidelity Rollover IRA. That way you have more investment choices than the Vanguard TDA 2065. If you put it in an SP500 index fund like IVV, IVW, SPY, VOO, or VOOG then your $410k would grow to $4,444,229 in 25 years assuming an 10% average annual rate of return. If you and your wife’s $1 million was just invested in the SP500 then you would have $10,834,706 in 25 years assuming a conservative 10% average annual rate of return. If you want to get to $20 million then you need to add some individual stocks with good fundamentals to your portfolio. Once you reach to $20 million when you’re 65 then you can diversify into high quality dividend stocks paying average of 5% dividends a year. Thats about $1,000,000 a year in dividends. Pretty good retirement income I would say.

fancifinanci

I’m assuming you have no exposure to VOO, IVV, or any other S&P 500 ETF since this is so important to you? Or is your laziness more important than your values

HoneyBadger552

split it between VTIP and IVV. if you want inflation protection and some market exposure

HoneyBadger552

do nothing. keep everything or most in IVV, SPMO, or your preferred ETF

hedginghedgehog

apart from everything else people said - IVV and VOO are essentially the same thing, splitting them like that doesn't gain you anything. Just choose one or the other. If you want to diversify it, the way to do it is either through mid/small cap etfs, or some international market ones.

FrankDrebinOnReddit

VOO and IVV are both the S&P 500, so if you only want the S&P 500 (large-caps), then VOO is already diversified. If you also want mid-caps or small-caps, you can use VTI (which is total-US-market), or buy mid-caps and small-caps separately (e.g., SPMD and IJR, which are the S&P 400 Mid-Caps Index and S&P 600 Small-Caps Index). These should be much smaller allocations than your S&P 500 allocation. Also consider some international, either separately (VXUS), or you can just get total-world-market (VT).

FrankDrebinOnReddit

The market's been choppy as of late. In the short-term, equities might drop. In the long term (decade plus), you will very, very likely outperform a HYSA by a significant amount. One thing is that there's no benefit to owning both VOO and IVV. They're the same. No real harm in it, either, but I didn't want you to think that it was a form of diversification since they both hold the same underlying assets.

ServerTechie

You should prioritize a 529 account over a UTMA account. 529 is strictly for use for education be it school, certifications, training, books, dorm, etc. UTMA is a brokerage account handed over to them at 21, at which point they could sell it all and spend how they see fit. I have both accounts for my kids, most of my weekly contributions are to 529. A good choice for UTMA is to keep it simple like IVV or VOO for S&P500 index. I would avoid international equity in a UTMA unless you want to deal with foreign dividend tax implications.

5punkmeister

Yeah I had a lot in IVV I'm not excited about this....

SukottoHyu

For starters, research what broker you want to use because brokers will have varying fees. Trading platforms such as Robinhood and Trading 212 are more appropriate because they have marginal fees and are ideal for buying and selling effortlessly. Traditional investment platforms such as CommSec are structured differently, have larger fees, and are more appropriate for investing large sums of money over a very long period. Investing through your bank will also be more costly. In short, use trading platforms instead. Also consider that types of investments you want to make because not all brokers support the same investments and it will vary by region. One you choose a platform, invest in an ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index. This will be something like VOO, VUAG, IVV etc; these "tags" are ticker symbols for the ETF which make it easy to identify the investment. There are many different kinds of ETFs that track the S&P 500 index such as "acc" and "dist" and "hedged" Vanguard, Invesco..., but as a complete beginner, just pick one, they are all mostly the same. This is the most reliable investment you can make because in the long run you are guaranteed to make returns, it averages out at around 10% returns per year (slightly less if measuring in real returns). But honestly you can expect more than 10%. While your money is in an ETF working for you, open a practice account and play around for a couple of years, because you are very young, and even older experienced investors make mistakes. While you are trading on a practice account, do some research, find out what "hedged" is etc. Look at how the market behaves, learn about stocks, ETFs, fundamental analysis, technical analysis... Look at different investment strategies. When you are older and more experienced, you can start thinking about buying stocks and look at what your long-term investment goals are and how you plan to balance and diversify your portfolio. Start simple. Good luck.

UpDown

Thats obvious not bad compared to IVV, but it was 9 or 10 last year.

D_Pablo67

Step 1 is to start a Roth IRA and invest in broad market ETFs like VOO, SPY, IVV and QQQ until you reach $20,000. Then start researching top companies that will grow over the next five years and invest in about five of them. Once you get there, look at buying a home. Adding some gold after that is fine. Rental properties can be good, but start with stock investments and buying a home first. Insurance is not an investment.