Hey guys, today I’m going to talk about how anyone can buy the S&P 500 index. There are several different ways that you can purchase this index, whether it’s via an ETF or a mutual fund. Investing into the S&P 500 arguably can be one of the best passive ways to invest into the stock market.
The first thing that you’ll need to do is have a brokerage account set up. That brokerage account can be a traditional brokerage account, a retirement account, health savings account or a 529 college savings account.
But let’s not complicate things. Let’s just say you had a normal after tax brokerage account already set up. Which can be with a popular broker such as Vanguard, Fidelity, RobinHood and so on. There’s many that you can choose from.
Let’s assume you already have all that set up. The next step would be to purchase either an ETF or a mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500 index. There are many different firms out there that aim to track the S&P 500 index. I’m going to list a couple that are more popular down below.
The first one I’m going to discuss is through Vanguard, their S&P 500 ETF equivalent is ticker symbol money $VOO. The second one is through State Street Global Advisors and the last is managed via BlackRock.
| Fund Manager | Index | Ticker | Expense Ratio |
| Vanguard | S&P 500 | VOO | 0.03 |
| State Street Global Advisors | S&P 500 | SPY | 0.09 |
| BlackRock | S&P 500 | IVV | 0.03 |
If you prefer to invest via a mutual fund instead, there are several options that you can choose from for that route too.
| Fund Manager | Index | Ticker | Expense Ratio |
| Fidelity | S&P 500 | FXIAX | 0.015 |
| Schwab | S&P 500 | SWPPX | 0.02 |
| Vanguard | S&P 500 | VFIAX | 0.04 |
