This Vanguard ETF Would Have Quadrupled Your Money Over the Last Decade. History Says Now Is a Smart Time to Invest. (It's Likely to Outperform SpaceX, Too.)
We're all looking for solid investments for our portfolios, right? It's easy to focus on big-name high-flying stocks, such as Nvidia or Micron Technology. But there's also some risk there, as many highfliers end up overvalued and poised to fall extra-hard in a market pullback. (And a market pullback is far from unlikely these days.) So permit me to suggest a terrific investment that you might not have taken seriously enough: a simple, low-fee S&P 500 index fund. A splendid example is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO +0.46%). It's an exchange-traded fund (ETF) -- a fund that trades like a stock. Like any good S&P 500 index fund, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF features low fees. While some actively managed mutual funds might charge you 1% or more of your assets each year, this fund charges 0.03% -- or just $3 annually for every $10,000 you have invested in it. Today's Change (0.46%) $3.17 Current Price $693.86 It tracks the S&P 500, of course -- an index of roughly 500 of the biggest stocks in America. Together, they make up about 80% of the value of the entire U.S. stock market, which is why the S&P 500 is often used as a proxy for the total U.S. stock market. Together, the index's recent top 10 components make up about 38% of the index's value by weight. Here they are as of July 9: Stock Percentage of ETF Nvidia 7.39% Apple 6.71% Microsoft 4.15% Amazon.com 3.83% Alphabet (Class A shares) 3.26% Alphabet (Class C shares) 3.04% Broadcom 2.76% Meta Platforms 2.46% Tesla 2.22% Micron Technology 1.60% Data source: Slickcharts.com, as of July 9, 2026. Like many indexes, the S&P 500 is market-cap-weighted, with bigger companies wielding more influence than smaller ones. The fund has a solid record. Check out its average annual return over the last three, five, and 10 years (as reported by Morningstar on July 9): Last three years: 21.26% Last five years: 13.11% Last 10 years: 15.36% Over the last decade, these compounded annual returns would have quadrupled your money. Why invest in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF? Here are several reasons to invest: It's a good time to do so (there's rarely a bad time, if you're a long-term investor). It makes investing easy, plopping you into roughly 80% of the U.S. stock market with one "buy" order. It offers diversification -- when one company or industry falls, the others can offset that to some degree. For greater diversification, check out the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP +0.38%), which weights each of the 500 companies in the index equally. It's likely to outperform many growth stocks, especially overvalued ones -- including, arguably, Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX. Consider, for example, that the S&P 500's price-to-sales ratio was recently 3.7, while SpaceX's was 74.7. The S&P 500 has a solid track record, averaging annual gains of close to 10% over many decades, but many growth stocks are far less proven. The index is designed to perform well, as lagging components are regularly removed to make way for up-and-coming companies. Take a closer look at this ETF to see if it's a good fit for your needs.
Source: The Motley Fool