Here’s a continuation of a sample chapter from my latest book Exchange-Traded Funds Investing For Beginners.  The book has been well received, so I’ll post a number of other excerpts for your review in future posts.

And if they interest you, you can review the book for free right here.

That said, here’s an excerpt from the chapter entitled Different Types Of ETF Investments.  It begins like this…

VOO – Vanguard S&P 500 ETF
Here’s another S&P 500 ETF which is also like investing in a large, established part of the stock market.  It’s also made up of 500 prominent, US blue chip companies. These are nationally recognized, financially sound and well-established.

And VOO is one of the world’s most popular ETFs.  It’s one of the best ways for investors to get exposure to the S&P 500, and the S&P 500 is one of the best ways for investors to get exposure to the stock market.

While VOO is not as large as SPY, it has an expense ratio of just 0.03%, which is 3 times less than SPY’s 0.09%.

It follows the Standard & Poor’s 500® Index.  And it pays a 1.61% dividend which is about average.  But it has a very low net expense ratio of 0.03%.  So while VOO is not as large as SPY, it’s very low cost can be a good choice for long term investors.

So it represents a large cross section of the market, is low cost, and pays a dividend.  And it’s been around since 2010, so it’s well established.  And the S&P 500 is constantly reported in the news, so it’s performance is easy to track.

Also note that well known investor Warren Buffett also owns VOO in his Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.  So Warren owns SPY and VOO, the only two index funds in his portfolio.

Indexed to: Standard & Poor’s 500® Index.

Expense Ratio: 0.03%

Total Assets: $775 billion

Annual Dividend Yield: 1.61%

P/E ratio: 20.47

Fund Inception: 09/07/2010

Top Holdings:

• AAPL        Apple Inc
• MSFT       Microsoft Corp        Technology
• AMZN      Amazon.com Inc
• NVDA       NVIDIA Corp
• TSLA        Tesla Inc
• BRK.B       Berkshire Hathaway Inc Class B
• GOOGL    Alphabet Inc Class A
• GOOG      Alphabet Inc Class C
• XOM        Exxon Mobil Corp
• UNH        UnitedHealth Group Inc        Healthcare

So that’s the VOO Vanguard S&P 500 ETF.  It’s quite well known and its one of the world’s most popular ETFs, at an expense ratio of just 0.03%.  And it one of only two ETFs owned by billionaire Warren Buffett, so that’s something to consider.

In our next post, we’ll look at our last large cap stock ETF we discuss in this chapter.  And it’s different than the other three we discussed.  It literally owns all the stocks in the market, i.e. small, medium and large.  So you’ll want to check that out when we post it.

That said, if you found this sample chapter excerpt interesting, you can check out the book for free right here.