Warren Buffett's favorite fund quadrupled your money in 10 years

Warren Buffett has spent six decades turning idiosyncratic banal picks into 1 of the largest idiosyncratic fortunes successful American history.

Buy a low-cost S&P 500index fund, permission it alone, and halt trying to outguess nonrecreational traders, helium has told shareholders repeatedly.

Fresh show information makes it wide that investors who followed Buffett's proposal person been rewarded handsomely for their patience implicit time.

The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), the ETF stock people of the Vanguard 500 Index Fund that Buffett efficaciously endorsed successful his 2013 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder missive erstwhile helium wrote "I suggest Vanguard's," produced a full instrumentality of 303% implicit the past decade.

A $10,000 concern made 10 years earlier grew into much than $40,000 arsenic of July 28, 2026, according to information compiled by The Motley Fool.

That maturation is striking connected its own, but it takes connected sharper meaning erstwhile stacked against the way grounds of full-time portfolio managers.

How the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF turned humble savings into $40,000

VOO holds each banal successful the S&P 500 index, weighted by marketplace capitalization, and charges an yearly disbursal ratio of 0.03%.

That interest amounts to $3 per twelvemonth for each $10,000 invested, good beneath the 0.72% mean for akin large-cap equity funds, Vanguard information shows.

VOO became the archetypal ETF to transverse $1 trillion successful assets connected June 2, 2026. Combined with its communal money stock class, the underlying Vanguard 500 Index Fund holds astir $1.6 trillion successful full assets, InvestmentNews reported. 

That maturation reflects a broader displacement into passive scale funds; VOO unsocial attracted much than $69 cardinal successful nett inflows successful the archetypal fractional of 2026.

Robert R. Johnson, Professor of Finance astatine Creighton University's Heider College of Business, told U.S. News that the cumulative resistance of money fees works against investors implicit clip successful the aforesaid mode that returns compound successful their favor.

The returns of the marketplace person been driven by a tiny percent of large winners. For most, trying to prime winners ex-ante is simply a loser's game, truthful the solution is to put successful diversified scale funds wherever you don't person to prime the winners

An capitalist who placed $10,000 successful VOO a decennary agone and reinvested dividends would clasp a presumption worthy astir $40,300 today. That result required nary idiosyncratic banal research, nary rebalancing, and nary absorption fees eating into yearly gains on the way.

The SPIVA scorecard reinforces Buffett's lawsuit against stock-pickers

The semi-annual S&P Indices Versus Active Funds report, known arsenic the SPIVA scorecard, measures however actively managed funds execute against benchmarks.