Index Funds

The low-cost way to own the whole market.

1. What Index Funds Are — How index funds work, why owning the whole market beats trying to pick the winners for most people, and what two decades of a real S&P 500 fund looked like.
2. Costs & Tracking — How to judge whether an index fund does its job: expense ratio, tracking difference, tracking error and trading costs, with a real side-by-side of two S&P 500 funds.
3. Total-Market vs. S&P 500 — The difference between a total US market fund and an S&P 500 fund, how small companies and the Nasdaq-100 compare, and real returns over 1, 10 and 20 years.
4. International Index Funds — Why investors hold stocks from outside the US, the difference between developed and emerging markets, currency risk, and what the real record of international funds teaches.
5. Building an Index Portfolio — How to turn a few index funds into a complete portfolio: choosing a stock and bond mix, the classic three-fund setup, rebalancing and keeping the plan simple enough to follow.