IVV

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.

nigelboid

Given that you are the breadwinner and that you have a steady income, I am targeting my advice to you and not your parents. First, money market funds and bonds are nearly identical since most money market funds invest in bonds then take a cut. Bonds will keep your income generally just above inflation with fluctuations. Given current trajectories, bonds will deliver relatively small returns over the next year or two. In your shoes, I would dump all the money into a diversified index fund. $ACWI seems to be slightly better positioned than $IVV in our current geopolitical environment, but the two mostly overlap each other. If you do not like iShares, most other ETF and mutual fund purveyors have analog funds with equally small fees ($SPY, $VTI, etc.). If you do not want to own, I agree that real estate and the associated mortgage would not be a good idea. Real estate is illiquid, comes with huge fees, and tends to disappoint on returns.

5punkmeister

IVV is literally like 10% of my portfolio right now. No one gets puts on gold and silver at the tipping point of a major global recession. There's like 0% chance this shit is going anywhere but, up for the next I prolly 2-5 years.

SirGlass

Is its higher expense ratio worth the dividend avoidance? Doing some quick napkin math on a 100k investment VOO will produce approx 1.3% dividends or 1300 of dividend what assuming you are in the 15% bracket will cost you $195 XDIV expense ratio is 0.085%; not from the looks of it it holds funds like IVV or SPY or VOO what also has a 0.03% expense ratio so the 0.085% is the extra you are paying to not get dividends if you held VOO On a 100k that is $800, to me you are paying $800 to avoid like $200 of taxes?

moSNAP

If you are a penny pincher instead of VOO or IVV, go SWPPX if you're at Schwab or FXAIX if you're at Fidelity 0.02% SWPPX/FXAIX vs 0.03% IVV/VOO Mutual Funds give less anxiety, imo and you can just buy plain dollar amounts. The con is you won't get updated prices until later on in the day.

ServerTechie

For my kids UTMA all I do is IVV. It’s good enough, I only contribute $5 a week each so I didn’t want dilution, I contribute way more to their 529 accounts for college, and since UTMA is technically a brokerage account I didn’t want to deal with foreign dividend tax fillings.

D_Pablo67

Best investor education website: www.aaii.com which is the American Association of Individual Investors. Best books on investing in individual stocks and the stock market in general: One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch. Beating the Street by Peter Lynch, his sequel to One Up On Wall Street. Winning on Wall Street by Martin Zweig. He was an investing legend in the 1980s (died young). He has some really interesting analysis about how to understand how interest rate changes affect markets and how to track corporate earnings trends on old fashioned index cards. Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers. He is a really interesting guy and legendary international investor. His first book “Investment Biker” is about riding around China on a motorcycle in the 1980s and buying stocks over the counter. Adventure Capitalist is the sequel driving around the world in 2000. Reading it is more for developing knowledge of the world and understanding his perspective than practical advice. Key concepts to master: What is compounding and why does it work? What is the S&P 500 and why does it out perform most stock pickers? How to invest in ETFs like VOO, IVV and SPY? Ask your parents to set up a new Trump Account for you. Then can contribute $5,000 starting July 4, 2026 and they must invest in a broad based index fund. If you want to understand accounting and how to read and manipulate financial statements, read “Unaccountable Accounting” by Abraham Brilloff, the father of modern day accounting and forensic accounting. He writes about how management try to manipulate financial statements and thus investor sentiment. He has accounting jokes. “How is a balance sheet like a bikini?” You need to read the beginning of the book for the answer.

D_Pablo67

I am 58 and still have my stock market investments 80-85% individual stocks and ETFs and half my net worth in rental real estate. I like the balance. For stocks, an S&P 500 ETF like VOO, IVV or SPY is fine.

CartographerTrue1386

$VOO / $SPY / $IVV and similar ETFs all hold the same securities (stocks) found in the S&P. A lot of words to say “yes.” Haha

Ok-Educator5253

VOO, IVV, SCHG, VT, VTI, QQQM You want to capture the growth of the market as a whole for most of your money.

Varrooom

Sorry for the late reply. If you have no plans for the money for the next five years then an SP500 Index fund is your best bet. There’s VOO, SPY, and IVV. If you want an SP500 ETF with a tad more growth in it then VOOG and IVW are good too. I own IVW. I had it for over 15 years and I am happy with it.

Heyhayheigh

Yea. You can do this VOO vs SPLG vs IVV for example. Same thing with tax loss harvesting. I would argue it is just best to focus on accumulate, and you will probably promote bad behavior and call it “harvesting”, but in theory, yes.

kiwimancy

Not sure where you got those numbers. Are they in USD? IWLD in returned 16.76% in AUD for the 5 year period through 2025, while IVV returned 17.64%.

GuyNext

Only index ETF like VOO, SPY, IVV. Unless you know how to trade actively with options and stop loss, it’s not worth it. You will lose lot of money otherwise.

Shock223

> But why is it talked about so much more than SPY or IVV or SCHG? Because of first mover advantage. Jack Bogle made the concept popular, got the concept to the masses, and "Voo and Chill" continues to remain the statement. Now there are other options out there but it was the first and the most well known.

Ok-Educator5253

But why is it talked about so much more than SPY or IVV or SCHG? Is it just because Vanguard is more popular?

Varrooom

VOO is an SP500 Index ETF with some stocks that pay dividends. VOOG is the same with more stocks that are focused on growth than on dividends. It’s not much difference since both have the same top ten holdings. You don’t need to worry about the AI holdings or it being tech heavy. The companies in the fund meet strict performance criteria or wouldn’t be in there. They have deep pockets, large cash balances, and strong fundamentals. VOOG is a big fund with 2 trillion in assets. You’re 29 so you need growth. So VOOG is perfect. The return is just a little better. I have IVW which is the same as VOOG but it has $66 billion in assets. I just like it due to its smaller size. Easier for the portfolio manager to manage cuz it’s not so big. The holdings are very similar to VOOG. I had it for over 10 years. The company is called iShares. IVV and IVW is like VOO and VOOG.

Former_Tomato9667

I hedge against institutional fraud and failure with funds from different managers, e.g. mix of VOO and IVV. It’s a bit tinfoil-hat-y but I don’t have a lot of faith in regulatory protection these days.

Schifty

10 losses, biggest win was 3k with IVV during the tariff downturn

Horror-Appeal-190

Consistency. If I can make 20 bucks a day even, its a good day. What blows me up is thinking I can do it again in the same day or because muh feels. Blew up my account numerous times. You can turn 100 into thousands. If you cant, then just invest in the market.IVV, VOO, etc.

MattieShoes

> however they don’t have that index fund SWPPX > /ETF No trade fees on ETFs so you could use any ETF you want. Back in the trade fee days, they offered $0 trades of IVV. > Schwab doesn’t have VTI You can absolutely invest in VTI at Schwab. > neither of these 3 brokerages use the term “index fund” but only have ETF. They all offer ETFs and mutual funds. "Index fund" is just a term for a fund that follows an index rather than trying to pick winners. It could be used for mutual fund or ETFs. > Are there any benefits to using one brokerage than the other? Not significant ones -- mostly comes down to preference.

crazybutthole

If you buy SPYM - it has the lowest fee of all SP500 ETFs and it also has the lowest shares price ($80 approx) So it is exactly the same as VOO or IVV or any other sp500 fund except their shares are a lower price.

Chemical-Fun3692

thanks so much for this reassurance! I think SCHX mirrors the Dow Jones instead of S&P 500. Is there a downside to buying VOO or IVV or SPLG on Schwab rather than buy them on Vanguard? I think VOO is Vanguard only so not sure if it has a higher expense ratio on Schwab

SirGlass

An "Index fund" is just any fund that follows an index. Index funds can be an ETF or a Mutual fund. Now schwab does have SWPPX what is an S&P500 index fund setup as a mutual fund Schwab does not have their own S&P500 ETF, however at schwab you can buy VOO or IVV o SPLG no issues. SCHX is a very similar index , the returns are going to be near identical . SCHX holds about 750 largest companies vs the largest 500 but they are going to perform 99% the same, its not worth worrying about the small differences

SnS2500

\> "what's the point?" If you can't beat the S&P500 with your equities, yes, you are doing it wrong. Just buy VOO/IVV/SPYM. But also, you have to include your cash in your calculations of your portfolio return. Obviously if you are 99% cash and your portfolio beats VOO for the other 1%, that's not saying much.

MattieShoes

The S&P 500 is an *index* -- just an on-paper listing of 500(ish) of the largest US stocks. They make sure all sectors of the market are represented, and they weight the stocks by market cap. S&P 500 funds just copy what that index says. There are MANY S&P 500 index funds. I don't know how many, but I assume without checking that there are well over 100 of them. For the most part, it doesn't matter which you choose because their holdings will be nearly identical, their performance will be nearly identical. The list (off the top of my head) of why you might care: 1. Expense ratios. These basically get subtracted from your return each year. SPY has 0.09%, VOO has 0.03%, so in theory, VOO should outperform SPY by 0.06% each year. But there's so much random noise because maybe they rebalance on a slightly different schedule, on different days, etc. that it's almost irrelevant for such low expense ratios. It is something to look out for if some financial advisor dude is pushing an S&P 500 index fund with like 0.7% expense ratios though, because that's insane. 2. ETF vs mutual fund. Again basically the same performance, but one might prefer one to another. 3. if mutual fund, are there trade fees? For instance, I have Schwab. I cannot trade Vanguard's S&P 500 mutual fund (VFIAX) for free. I can Schwab's S&P 500 mutual fund (SWPPX) for free though. So if I wanted mutual fund over ETF, SWPPX would be the one for me. If I didn't care about mutual funds, I could buy any ETF for zero trade fees, so IVV, VOO, whatever, all fine. 4. If I want to play options games like selling covered calls on my S&P 500 fund holdings, I'd want SPY, full stop. VTI is also an index fund, but it's a different index. Instead of including 500 of the largest US stocks spread across all market sectors, it has several thousand US stocks spread across all market sectors. But since it is also weighted by market cap, that means those 500 largest that comprise the S&P 500 also make up the majority of this other index VTI uses... three fourths? I'd have to look, but that's a reasonable ballpark. And the several thousand smaller companies tend to follow the same trends as those 500 largest ones, so their returns are... not identical, but nearly identical. In theory, VTI will outperform if small cap companies outperform those mega-giant companies, and VOO would outperform if those giants outperform smaller companies. But in practice, it's mostly just all cancelled out over the long term. TL;DR: VOO or VTI, doesn't matter.

Pendleton1910

They track the exact same index. Functionally identical, SPY has an expense ratio of .09% and VOO is .03%. Thus the slight edge to VOO, IVV, and SPYM. SPYM is .02% but lower trading volume and wider price spreads. In other words be careful with SPYM market orders, better to use limit order to be safe.

brewgeoff

Here are a few tools that you could use to examine this problem but none of them will be perfect. The classic example are the SPIVA studies but those compare the real world after-fee performance of active managers to the frictionless hypothetical performance of the index. They also seem less concerned with how appropriate the benchmark may be as a measurement of a fund. So, one step better than SPIVA would be to compare active managers against the performance of a real-world index fund that serves as an appropriate benchmark. (IVV/VOO for US large blend, IEFA or VEA for international developed etc.) This is the level you can easily achieve for analysis using a tool like Morningstar or a heatmap. Morningstar allows you to compare an index fund against its peers in a category. A heatmap tool could provide risk-adjusted performance comparisons or pure performance comparisons but these are typically available to financial professionals. Going beyond this level would require you to determine which finds actually seek to outperform their benchmark long term… which is squishy at best. Some funds include language such as “seeks to outperform XYZ benchmark” or “seems to provide a smoother return over a full market cycle compared to XYZ benchmark” which can signal that they are trying to compete or trying to provide *risk adjusted* returns. Unfortunately, many funds give no specific language either way. There are other problems like funds closing over time, management philosophies changing, style drift and a half-dozen other variables that could confound your data. If I recall correctly Ben Felix or one of his guests did mention that pre-fee performance of active managers is actually very competitive or maybe even bears the index? None of this gets you closer to your goal of a proper benchmarking study. As someone who has also considered this problem (and has access to more data/resources than a retail investor I have found it difficult to solve but I hope some academic puts it to the test in a rigorous way. My general takeaway from the time I spent pursuing this question is that different parts of the market favor different styles: US large blend is so efficient that a pure index works great. Factor based investing seems to work well for small caps. Active managers hold up better in international markets but the index still does very well. Bonds seem to be the one area where active management can find an edge.

ForeverInTheSun82647

VOO is one of the best passive ETFs out there. That and IVV from Blackrock.

Horror-Appeal-190

Sell DOGE, lol. As far as picks, I think you got some good ones. If you do get back green please just put like 90% into VOO/VXUS or IVV/IXUS SOFI and HOOD are actually good choices, but bro if you just would have bought VOO and VXUS you'd actually be up 20% on your account. You can't out stock pick the market as you can see here.

GuyNext

Index ETF like VOO, IVV, SPY. Anything else would need DCA or at least put options to safeguard the investment. Without stop loss on Individual stocks, you may end up bag holder.

crazybutthole

have you considered being realistic? if you want to invest in america - just buy Sp500 (voo/spym/IVV) whatever is available to you if you need some silly guarantee this the right move? if you pick three random companies like asts RKLB ASTS and SOFI - and i can pick sp500? i think i will win. (just my opinion - i might be wrong - i love SOFI)

flat_top

Easiest fund to replicate. FXAIX is the fidelity equivalent mutual fund. VOO and IVV are popular ETFs.  

PalpitationSmooth992

Gold and oil up bond volume after hours is nuts large amounts of VOO SPY and IVV getting dumped all signs point to -1% day tomorrow

RaiderDaave

No one talks about IVV which has same expense as VOO

Fuzzy_Strawberry4792

Yeah the main thing is FXAIX only trades at market close while IVV you can buy/sell anytime during market hours. For long term buy and hold that doesn't really matter though - just set up auto investing with FXAIX and forget about it

Ok-Constant6488

They’re basically the same bet (S&P 500). The ETF or mutual fund wrapper is a minor difference. FXAIX (mutual fund) \* Lower ER (0.015% vs IVV \~0.03%) \* Great for set-and-forget: automatic investing, exact dollar amounts \* Trades once/day at NAV (less “messing with it”) IVV (ETF) \* Often a bit more tax-efficient in a taxable account (ETF structure tends to avoid capital-gains distributions) \* Trades intraday, has bid/ask spread (tiny cost, but real) \* More portable if you switch brokerages If you want to have more details gave a look at this comparison , got my partial insights from there [https://pinklion.xyz/tools/etf-compare/FXAIX/IVV](https://pinklion.xyz/tools/etf-compare/FXAIX/IVV) **Rule of thumb** **\* IRA/401k/Roth:** pick **FXAIX** (cheaper + easy automation). **\* Taxable brokerage:** **IVV** can be slightly better for taxes/portability; difference is usually small if you just buy/hold. Either is totally fine long-term the bigger driver is staying invested.

rocknroller2000

One thing to consider is that mutual funds, especially brokerage house ones like fxaix, are not portable to other brokers. Should you ever need to , or desire to move those funds to a different brokerage, your only option is to sell them and deal with any tax implications as a result of that sale. With most s&p etfs like IVV or VOO (my personal preference), etc, they are completely transportable between firms.

SnS2500

IVV is better for taxes. ETFs are a growing phenomenon, mutual funds are a shrinking one. Besides that, this is this most trivial choice you will make in your entire life.

Machine8851

FXAIX is a little cheaper and the performance is updated after the bell. IVV is an ETF so you see everything in real time. I prefer FXAIX a little more.

Jajuyns

FXAIX: Lower expense ratio and very easy to automate, making it a strong choice for long-term, hands-off investing—especially in retirement accounts or if you plan to stay with Fidelity.IVV: Slightly more tax-efficient by structure, tradable intraday, and easier to move between brokerages—better suited for taxable accounts or investors who want flexibility.

airbud9

You are confusing a few terms. They are both index funds, and both following the same index (S&P 500). FXAIX is a mutual fund while IVV is an ETF. There are some differences with the ETF and mutual fund distinction but in a practical sense it makes very little difference. The two funds should perform extremely similar before expenses and FXAIX is .015 basis point cheaper of an expense ratio.

CHL9

I would do IVV/SPLM, QQQM, or SCHG. If there’s a crash in the timeframe you get it I’d scoop TQQQ. 

Gorgenapper

I don't know how people don't at least build up a large position in low cost ETFs like VOO or IVV **before** doing stupid plays. Get compound growth working for you as the slow and steady backup plan first, I mean, why does it have to be all or nothing? 95% into ETFs like a good boy, and 5% into absolutely stupid 0DTEs in the off chance you bet right.

AlfredoAllenPoe

Both are fine. The tiny margin is negligible as they track the same index. VOO is just bigger than IVV, so more people are going to recommend it. More people are familiar with VOO than IVV. Traditionally, SPY was the main S&P 500 fund, but they have higher fees. VOO was the first fund to undercut SPY, so they are the most popular. It's the lingering effects of their Blue Ocean advantage.

SharestepAI

Why specifically Vanguard's VOO, and not, for example, iShares IVV, which serves an identical purpose, has an identical expense ratio, and has even returned a tiny margin higher over 1y?

Lakeview121

VGT is a good fund. I’d leave it there and diversify funds going forward. Maybe go with an s@p500 index fund going forward, like VOO or IVV.

PalpitationSmooth992

holy after hours 17m VOO 15m IVV 5m SOXL 2m QQQ the rest is leveraged inverse etfs weed crypto and small cap stocks top is in for large cap tech especially semis 2026 the year of the RUSSELL

NegotiationWest6381

Honestly from everything I’ve looked into regular independent investors can’t buy into OpenAI directly. It’s not a public company, and the only people getting a piece are huge firms like Microsoft and SoftBank through private funding rounds. The closest way for us “normal people” to get in on it is just buying Microsoft (MSFT)since they’re the biggest investor and basically tied at the hip with OpenAI. If you want even easier exposure ETFs like VOO, IVV, QQQ, or VTI all hold Microsoft as one of their top positions so you get indirect OpenAI exposure that way. But yea there’s no legit way for retail investors to buy OpenAI shares directly right now. Anything claiming they can get you OpenAI stock is most likely a scam.

MarkT1065

SPY is 0.09% expense ratio. IVV is 0.03%. SPY is for options. You said "core holding", so go with the lower expense alternative.

MarkT1065

SPY is for options and IVV is for holding due to expense ratios. .009 vs .003

MarkT1065

You said "core", so not SPY because it's expense ratio is 0.009 whereas IVV is 0.003. SPY is for options trading.

CycleApprehensive539

>The SP500 index funds need to buy roughly 16 million shares (approx. $7B) by Dec 19. **They can't buy yet**, so arb desks will be buying Monday to warehousefor them. Does he mean these guys are buying by Dec 19th? * VOO * IVV * SPY * FXAIX * SWPPX * VFIAX But they can't buy it yet? Can someone or u/dowgy demystify this? Thanks

TheInkDon1

Good question: I'm in between. Let me explain. Over the past 20 years I've sworn off stocks for ETFs so many times I can't count. And always for the same reason: *single-issue risk.* What it that? Musk tweets something stupid, Tesla drops 10%. Oracle doesn't meet expected earnings, it drops 15%. Enron, "the smartest guys in the room", weren't: bankruptcy. **So since March I've only done ETFs.** If you ever catch me trading a single stock, I want you to shoot me. Please. And sure some ETFs have big drops, but they're ones I don't touch: crypto and cannabis. Other than that, ETFs just don't move that quickly. And why? Because they're baskets of stocks, right? (For the most part.) So if an ETF holds 100 stocks, and one goes to zero, how much should the ETF drop? Just 1%. (Aside from sector-sympathy that might drag some of the others down too.) Why don't I use SPY and QQQ and the like? 1 - because I'm not an indexer by nature, because: 2 - I like to find things *that are going up*, and trade those. But don't get me wrong, if SPY or QQQ were going up fast enough to screen-in to how I screen, then I'd trade them. I recently traded IWM, the Russell 2000, because of that. Now maybe let me expand your mind a bit: *Do you know how many ETFs there are in the US?* **4,300!** Four **THOUSAND** and three hundred. But you only hear about a dozen of them, don't you? VT, VTI, SCHD, VOO, IVV, VXUS, maybe ITOT, like that. *Did you know that* [momentum in equity prices persists](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927538X18303998?via%3Dihub#preview-section-references)*?* It does. For 1, 2, 3, even 6 months or more. Now, what if we put those 2 things together and looked for **ETFs with momentum**? And then instead of *buying* them, buy **LEAPS Calls** on them. Deep ITM LEAPS Calls act as *share substitutes* and give us **leverage**. Let me know if you're interested in hearing more.

AluminiumCaffeine

Feels good to crush IVV ofc, but it is a little grinding to have put so many hours of work and research into trading only to squeak by the MSCI ex-us this year, although to be fair I crushed them last 4 years so this is their rebound year lol... +30% ytd on ex-us who would have though

bizlososphy

Hey, congrats to your parents on the inheritance. Since they're comfortable with volatility and aiming for S&P 500-ish returns, dollar-cost averaging into a low-fee S&P 500 index fund (like IVV or SPY) within their Schwab account over the next year is probably the simplest, most cost-effective strategy. Paying an advisor for that seems unnecessary, tbh. One thought: if they're open to slightly more hands-on investing for potentially higher returns (and understand the illiquidity), some private equity or real estate syndications can be interesting for accredited investors. Just throwing it out there – it's kinda what I do. Good luck!

Ok-Lie-1582

I agree Fidelity of Schwab are better options and stick with Indexed ETFs, not individual stocks. Here’s a few of those that make up most of my Fidelity portfolio: IVV, IWY, FNCMX. It’s normal for them to ask for a social security number. As stated above, it’s needed for KYC (Know-Your-Customer which basically means the investment firm knows who you are). And a social security number is needed for Tax forms, since you are going to have to report your wins/losses to the IRS when you sell anything. So that’s another fun thing to look forward to. Best of luck getting started!

Prestigious-War3630

# What are the best stocks/ETFs should I focus on starting from next year? For some context, I'm a 16 year old Australian that's looking to invest some money into the ASX, but I'm very new to investing and have only done some research on what the stock market is like, all the different types of things I can buy, how buying and selling works etc. I have also looked into some ETFs that I think are quite good (VAS, VGS, SEMI, IVV, VHY), but now I have more money to deposit into my account, I want to begin to buy some stocks. I currently have a casual job that earns me around 300 per month, and my main goal is long term investing, and making the money growth over a long time, like 20-30 years, or maybe even 'till retirement. I have a low-moderate risk tolerance, which is why I have only chosen ETFs so far. I'm not sure where to start though, and what type of research to do. Should I look into bigger companies like NBA, BHP, Wesfarmers etc., or pick out some different types of investments like commodities for example. I'm still looking towards ETFs cause I know they're lower risk and generally grow over time, but I also want to expose my money to something higher risk with long term growth potential. The past year gold has been flying, and I've seen some people say that it will continue to have a bullish trend, so I'm also considering that as well. ASX: GOLD ETF is the primary one. Overall, I just want some help on what to buy for steady, but also occasional risked growth, especially stocks and which sector is best to buy. I'm currently still doing research, but it would also be great if anyone could help me on what type of research to do, like analyzing historical performances, or deeper statistics something like that. Thanks

throwawayainteasy

Please, tell me if ITOT is down 10%, and I sell it and immediately use the proceeds to buy IVV, how have I done anything but reduced my taxes for the year? ITOT and IVV perform nearly the same since they track very similar indices. It sounds right now like you don't understand how tax loss harvesting with index funds works.

throwawayainteasy

That is moronic advice. I sell ITOT or IVV and immediately buy the other. That locks in the losses for tax purposes while not impating my overall gains to any significant degree.