r/investing
What is a good index fund I can drop some money in and just leave it?
A 15-year-old seeks a globally diversified index fund with S&P 500-like returns, weighing VT's safety against its lower historical returns.
- S&P 500 offers a strong historical average return of around 11% per year.
- Global index funds like VT provide geographic diversification and safety against US-specific risks.
- S&P 500 is concentrated solely in the US, posing currency and country-specific risks.
- Global funds like VT historically show lower average returns compared to the S&P 500.
For context I am 15 and just got my first internship. I am planning on investing all 3000 I get from working over the summer, since my monthly expenses are basically me just grabbing a drink occasionally. My goal is to have put in 10k into the stock market by the time I’m 18, and then to start building an emergency fund and move out when it seems big enough to live off of for a few months if I need to, and to not touch the stock again until I want to pay off a down payment or retire, or if I will literally die without the money for whatever reason.
I was looking into the s&p 500, and its average return rate being around 11% per year. It looks promising to me, except for the fact it is only in the US. I don’t have much faith in the US dollar or the country as a whole, and want something similar but that tracks globally as I feel that would be safer. I saw VT, although that looks like the average return is a bit lower than the s&p 500. Does anyone have any advice? Is there anything that has a similar average return to the S&P, but tracks globally? Thank you :)