🏆 Check out these insane gains from Tigers:
Congrats to @nahwu , who bought VOO on the dip and is now up US$22,334.
Congrats to @del piero, who did the same and is up US$11,444.
Why do so many people pick S&P 500?
Warren Buffett has backed the S&P 500 many times. In his 2014 shareholder letter, he was very clear: in his will, 10% of the cash goes into short-term U.S. Treasuries, and the other 90% goes into a low-cost S&P 500 index fund. The logic is simple: instead of spending tons of time stock picking and timing the market, just buy a basket of leading companies.
$S&P 500(.SPX)$ tracks around 500 of the biggest listed companies in the U.S., covering roughly 80% of the total U.S. stock market value. It’s been around since 1957. Names everyone knows — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Google, Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson & Johnson and many more — are all inside this index.
Compared with betting on one or two single stocks, owning the index itself spreads your risk. It’s the classic idea: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. And the S&P 500 isn’t a static list. It’s updated regularly. Every quarter, weaker companies that no longer fit the criteria can be removed, and stronger ones get added.
In other words, when you buy the S&P 500, you don’t have to decide every day whether Apple will beat Microsoft. You just need to ask yourself a more basic question:
If over the next 20–30 years, the U.S. economy and capital markets keep running under a similar set of rules, do I want to be a shareholder of that system?
From 1957 to the end of 2020, the S&P 500 delivered annualized returns above 12% (before counting dividend reinvestment), already ahead of most financial products. That’s why Buffett keeps saying: for most regular investors, the best strategy is to hold a low-cost S&P 500 index fund for the long term.
So what is VOO, and what makes it different?
$Vanguard S&P 500 ETF(VOO)$ is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, an index ETF that tracks the S&P 500.
A few key things about it:
It’s passively managed. There’s no star manager making big calls. It simply buys and holds the stocks in the S&P 500, in line with the index weights.
It’s huge. VOO alone has hundreds of billions in assets, and Vanguard’s full S&P 500 product line (including mutual funds) manages over a trillion dollars.
It’s very cheap. The expense ratio is about 0.03% per year, a fraction of what many active stock funds charge.
When you trade VOO, volume is high and spreads are tight, so you’re less likely to be hurt by poor liquidity or big slippage. Over time, VOO tends to track the S&P 500 closely, so you actually get the market return you signed up for. And because the fees are tiny, less of your long-term compounding gets eaten by costs.
Is VOO still worth buying now?
It depends on what you’re trying to do.
If you’re not trying to flip for a quick gain, if you accept that the market goes up and down, and you’re willing to hold for 5 years or more, then VOO is a strong candidate for your core U.S. equity holding.
Especially in a market where global macro is still uncertain and AI themes keep rotating, VOO gives you a lower-volatility, more repeatable way to make money. You don’t have to guess the next NVIDIA. You just need to believe that U.S. large-cap companies as a whole will keep creating value over time.
When we say “core holding”, we mean the part of your equity money you don’t plan to touch much — the money you’re okay leaving there for 5–10 years or longer, mainly to keep up with the long-term growth of one of the world’s most important markets.
For many investors, a simple setup works well: put a solid chunk of your U.S. stock allocation into VOO as the base, then use a smaller portion for your own stock picks or hot themes. That way, you can balance “steady” and “exciting” — you have one part quietly compounding with the broad market, and a smaller part to express your own ideas.
How much should you put into something like VOO? There’s no fixed answer. It depends on your age, how stable your income is, how much risk you can take, and your life plans. But one rule of thumb:
The money you can handle seeing drop about 30% on paper — and that you won’t need for at least five years — is the part that’s more suitable for an ETF like VOO.
👉So here’s the question for you:
Would you use VOO as a core holding in your portfolio? Why or why not? $Vanguard S&P 500 ETF(VOO)$ $S&P 500(.SPX)$ $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ $iShares Core S&P 500 ETF(IVV)$
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