Quick Read – iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) both track the same 500 companies with identical 0.03% expense ratios and matching 27% one-year returns, but IVV offers tighter bid-ask spreads from heavier institutional volume and dividend payments…
riving one to four days faster than VOO. – IVV’s modest 1.1% distribution yield underperforms Treasury bonds near 5%, so the choice between IVV and VOO depends more on your brokerage platform’s spreads and your broker’s preferred fund rather than meaningful performance differentiation. – The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and iShares Core S&P 500 ETF wasn’t one of them. Get them here FREE
The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:IVV) and Vanguard’s S&P 500 fund are the two most commonly recommended core holdings in American retirement accounts, and the honest verdict is that picking between them is closer to choosing between two identical sedans than two different cars. IVV tracks the same 500 companies, charges the same headline fee, and has returned almost exactly the same amount as the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:VOO) over every meaningful window. The reason IVV deserves a closer look is mechanical: tighter bid-ask spreads from heavier institutional volume, and a payment schedule that hits brokerage accounts a day or two faster than VOO’s.
For a 60-year-old retiree rebalancing a $500,000 portfolio four times a year, those frictions add up to roughly $50 to $200 annually. That is real money for a fund that costs almost nothing to hold. The fund and what it actually does IVV is the simplest job in indexing: own all 500 S&P 500 constituents in proportion to their market cap and pass through the dividends.