The Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund is one of the lowest cost equity index funds that individual investors can buy directly.
To buy index funds, click on any of the 10 low cost, no load S&P 500 index funds below to find additional information about them. The article “Top 10 S&P 500 Index Funds” explains how this list was developed. The five letter term in parentheses is the fund’s trading symbol.
- California Investment S&P 500 Index Fund (SPFIX)
- Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund (FSMKX)
- Schwab S & P 500 Index Fund (SWPPX)
- SSga S&P 500 Index Fund (SVSPX)
- T Rowe Price Equity Index Fund 500 (PREIX)
- United Association S&P500 Index Fund (UAIIX)
- USAA S&P 500 Index Fund – Member (USSPX)
- Vanguard 500 Index Fund – Admiral (VFIAX)
- Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX)
- Vantagepoint 500 Index Fund – Stock II (VPSKX)
You should be able to go directly to most of these 10 funds and call them or download investment forms from their websites. When you shop for any investment, always pay attention to the details. Understand whether there are other restrictions, costs, and purchase conditions associated with buying any index mutual fund.
The S&P 500 composite index tracks about 75% of publicly traded U.S. equity market asset value.
The dominant issue in choosing among passively managed index mutual funds and ETF funds benchmarked against the S & P 500 is that securities industry management and trading fees are all over the map from reasonably low to shockingly high. If you are naive enough to pay higher expense ratios for what are just commodity S&P 500 index funds, then the high investment fees that you pay are just a wealth transfer from you to the financial industry that repeatedly bleeds your personal investment portfolio.
Overview of the Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund (FSMKX)
According to the Fidelity Investments website, the investment strategy of the Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund is to seek “investment results that correspond to the total return (i.e., the combination of capital changes and income) of common stocks publicly traded in the United States as represented by the S&P 500, while keeping transaction costs and other expenses low.”
With an annual management expense ratio of only .1% (one-tenth of one percent per year), the Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund has one of the lowest expense ratios of any retail S&P 500 index fund. You can buy shared directly, so you do not have to pay any investment counselor’s front-end sales load charges or any ongoing 12b-1 marketing fees.
Annual investment portfolio turnover is a trading cost proxy for large professionally managed investment portfolios, and since this fund’s portfolio turnover is about 5.0 per year, trading expenses are probably very low. Total net assets were $8.475 billion recently, making this a very large, but not the largest S&P 500 index fund. Because this fund closely tracks the S&P500 equity index, this means the fund holds only large capitalization U.S. equities, of course.
The Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund was first sold in 1990, and its trading symbol is FSMKX. Shares that an individual investor purchases are called “Investor Class” shares. The required minimum investment for a taxable investment account is $10,000. Check the minimums for other types, such as traditional IRA accounts or Roth IRA accounts.
You can find the Fidelity fund family website at www.fidelity.com. Fidelity’s customer service telephone number is 1-800-FIDELITY or 1-800-343-3548.
Your decision on whether to purchase or to sell any investment is yours and yours alone. READ OUR WEBSITE DISCLAIMER HERE: No Load Index Funds
