Tech and AI stocks are popular now, but these funds are built for decades ahead.
Tech and AI stocks are popular now, but these funds are built for decades ahead.
Investors spend a lot of time picking out stocks and ETFs to own now. The market and the media focus on the latest economic numbers, earnings reports, or signals.
In reality, your overall asset allocation explains more of your portfolio's returns and risk profile. You can complicate things by owning a half-dozen different funds with different target markets or themes. But the odds are good that you can achieve pretty similar returns over the long term by buying the S&P 500 and letting it grow over time.
That usually saves you a lot of headaches. There's no need to trade your brokerage account or watch the news every day. Just buy, hold, and let the U.S. economy do the work for you. If you're patient and have a long-term focus, these four ETFs can help you become wealthy.
Just own the market and be done with it
The Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF (VTI +0.07%) is perhaps the simplest long-term investing solution you'll find. It owns the entire investable U.S. stock universe, roughly 3,500 stocks in all, and covers every sector, theme, and market cap there is. And with an expense ratio of just 0.03%, it costs next to nothing to own. Virtually all long-term growth belongs to you.
VTI Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF
$378.66+$0.24 (+0.07%)
NYSEMKT · As of 10:50 AM ET 10/16/26
I prefer this fund to the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO +0.06%), although both work as core portfolio holdings. In reality, the Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF has an 88% overlap, so both ETFs' performance and behavior will be very similar, but I like adding the long-term potential of small caps as well.
Averytin News Financial update.