Best Vanguard Index Fund?

Impossible to answer. There isn’t a “best” fund.

Yea, but it’s better than mutual funds where you get raped with fees for the “managing”, like a 2050 fund

I originally set it up for a 2050 fund. Almost a 21% return, which is decent

I’m listening to an audio book, Common Sense Investing, and he is shitting all over mutual funds and using money managers. 90% of them are no better than your average, educated retail investor

I did the same thing with my fidelity account. Looked at the returns and hand picked much better index funds that had much better returns

There is VTI and VOO too

The Growth index funds outperforms the Total Stock Market index. A couple ETF’s do too

Some of the ETF options look good as well. Have to be careful because last year returns were absolutely crazy.

I’m 36. I’m starting to lean towards a Growth index fund or etf.

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Was questioning whether the 500 was better

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I thought I was doing really well with three hand picked funds in my HSA account.

They are getting me 20.1% ytd

Well, the S&P is at 20.75%

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I’m listening to an audio book, Common Sense Investing, and he is shitting all over mutual funds and using money managers. 90% of them are no better than your average, educated retail investor

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It really depends, but index fund people champion index funds because of the low cost and the fact most active managed funds arent worth the extra expense because long term 8/10, 9/10 or so dont outperform the index. There's also a lot of bad mutual fund products out there, but some really good ones too.

HOWEVER, that doesnt mean if you really do some research and good picking on some higher expense mutual funds you cant beat the market/index over some time, either. I would say it's probably more about being lucky though there than a great picker overall. Some can just be very good (probably lucky) about going to the right funds when the time is right.

I do both low expense index funds and higher fee mutual funds and do have some mutual funds who have crushed the index. One example is WMICX from Wasatch. It has a ridiculous expense ratio (1.66%), but the returns on it the last few years have been extremely high. According to morningstar over 10% higher than the index in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. It's actually not doing great in it's category in 2021, but still above the index. WMICX performance...but then you look at 2011 through 2016 and it was most definitely not worth the extra cost. Even then though, if you look at the 10 year return, it's at 21.16% annualized which the index was at just 15.6% annualized, so the 1.66% expense ratio still was justified over 10 years in that respect.