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.

Meet the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF

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.

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:

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.

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.)