The featured image on this post is from the “ETFs ideas for 2019” Viewpoints article for January 24, 2019. One could do worse than to pick any of these three as a cornerstone for their retirement investments. They all feature low expense ratios. IVV and VTI are both at 0.04% and SPY is at 0.09%. For that reason, I would focus on IVV and VTI (although the difference in cost is minimal, it is my preference to minimize all costs). Not surprisingly, they all have similar dividend yields of about 2%. To put this in dollars, if you have $100,000 invested in VTI you would pay $40 per year in expenses, and you would receive about $2,000 per year in dividends.

The turnover ratios are also all below 5%, and I believe that works to the benefit of the long-term investor. This is not surprising, as all three are invested in the big companies or the total market. All three have Microsoft as the top holding by percentage. However, there is a big difference between SPY, IVV and VTI that should not be ignored. Then number of positions in VTI is at least three times as many as the other two. If you want more diversification then VTI is the best choice of the three.

These are not your only options. You could buy FXAIX, which is a low-cost index mutual fund. The expense ratio for this “Fidelity® 500 Index Fund” is 0.02%. You could also buy Fidelity® Total Market Index Fund (FSKAX) with a 0.02% expense ratio. The only reason to avoid these is the inability to trade them in the middle of the day. If you enter a buy or sell order at noon, you don’t get the price of the fund at noon because the price is unknown until after the market closes. That is one reason I generally prefer ETFs over mutual funds. However, that is not a deal-breaker for the investor with a long-term view. LINK:   https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/active-investor/etf-ideas-2019