Top 10 S&P 500 Index Funds

Lower Cost, No Load S&P 500 Index Funds

If you wonder which no load investments have the lowest costs, the research article, “S&P 500 Index Mutual Funds,” by John A. Haslem, H. Kent Baker, and David M. Smith can help. It was published in the March/April 2007 issue of the Journal of Indexes (pages 34-38) and was based upon a more detailed study that these three investment researchers had conducted.

Haslem, Baker, and Smith studied the investment management expenses and sales fees associated with all S&P 500 index mutual funds. They found a very wide range of management fees and total expense ratios among the total of 202 funds tracking the Standard and Poors composite that they studied.

They also found that higher fees were NOT justified by superior performance. In fact, higher fees lead to lower net portfolio performance after investment costs. Haslem, et.al. found that higher expenses simply lowered investors’ net returns. They grouped S & P 500 funds by expense groupings from low to high using statistical standard deviations around the average expense ratio for all these 202 passive, large capitalization investment portfolios.

This study provided a list of the 25 S&P 500 index funds with the lowest costs.

Unfortunately, if you looked at this list of 25 investment portfolios in detail, you would find many institutional funds that were not available for direct investments by individual investors. In addition, some of these 25 were no longer low cost. Some had been folded into other financial products that you had to purchase through an investment advisor. Unfortunately, such advisers only provide you the “opportunity” to invest in Class A, Class B, and Class C shares with front-end loads and/or back-end load charges and higher annual expenses.

The 10 index funds below tracking the Standard and Poors 500 composite are drawn from the list of 25 low cost index funds.

The list below includes funds that individual investors should be able to invest in directly or that may be available through certain large group investment plans. Of the original list of 25, most institutional funds have been eliminated. Also, others have been excluded, which have been merged into more expensive funds that require purchases to be made through advisors who charge additional fees.

The 10 on the list below are the remaining no load S&P 500 mutual funds that an individual investor does not need a financial advisor to buy. You should be able to buy most of these directly and easily from the company that manages them. You do not have to pay the heavy added expenses of buying through a stock broker, financial adviser, investment adviser, or investment counselor.

Click on the links to any of these 10 no load mutual funds below to find additional information about them. The five letter term in parentheses is the trading symbol.

  1. California Investment S&P 500 Index Fund (SPFIX)
  2. Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Fund (FSMKX)
  3. Schwab S & P 500 Index Fund (SWPPX)
  4. SSga S&P 500 Index Fund (SVSPX)
  5. T Rowe Price Equity Index Fund 500 (PREIX)
  6. United Association S&P500 Index Fund (UAIIX)
  7. USAA S&P 500 Index Fund – Member (USSPX)
  8. Vanguard 500 Index Fund – Admiral (VFIAX)
  9. Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX)
  10. Vantagepoint 500 Index Fund – Stock II (VPSKX)

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

Top 10 S&P 500 Index Funds

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