# S&P 500 index fund

28 Hacker News commenters recommended S&P 500 index fund and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a simple, low-cost way to hold hundreds of large US companies long term. Critics call its rules flawed and its top holdings too concentrated.

## Why people recommend it

- Beats stock picking and crypto (5 comments): "They made me more comfortable buying the S&P 500 knowing I'm not buying pre-revenue companies." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134981)) "And it works. Everyone picking the S&P 500 over its competitors chooses that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48408146)) "isn't the best investment option for the non-professional investor" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49369306))
- Strong long-run historical returns (5 comments): "buying assets is the way to keep up; an investment of $100 in the S&P500 in 1990 and never touched would be worth $4,120.93 today" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47576212)) "Of the investable markets, the US one still generates the highest returns." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709566)) "Investing in the S&P 500 for 10 years will on-average double your money" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46136686))
- Buy and hold without much work (4 comments): "The most sound finacial advice for all Americans has always been "buy S&P 500 and forget about it" for 200 years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49690059)) "The answer is don't worry about it if you're buying S&P 500. Just keep buying, leave it go, and don't touch it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857729)) "has done this and will continue to do this without any work or investments of time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48327783))
- Simple diversified low-cost index fund (3 comments): "dead-simple, low-fee, market-indexed funds are a generally good place to put the surplus fruits of your own little economic engine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47801442)) "Buffett himself tells everyone who will listen to buy and hold a diversified index fund for a long period of time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46449634)) "for the average consumer to invest in diversified index funds, like the S&P 500" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871679))

## What people warn about

- Index rules and weighting criticized (6 comments): "Profitability is an arbitrary rule for an antiquated index. Let it die." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406248)) "Amongst other things the weighting is not even based on the market cap." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409356)) "There are much better ways to build indices than the one they've built." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48440932))
- Too concentrated in a few firms (3 comments): "When 10 companies make the other 490 irrelevant in producing the annual return of the index, the index itself is no longer serving the diversification purpose." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47593683)) "you're getting a relatively concentrated, high valuation investment" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48369284)) "even 500 companies is too much of a bias towards one group" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46135939))
- Excludes SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic (2 comments): "the (current) rules for S&P500 inclusion exclude companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409404)) "it has (antiquated) rules that exclude large-cap US companies" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409309))
- Can fall sharply in crashes (2 comments): "leave it in the S&P 500 and be aware that one day it will blow up" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46933489)) "That can go very poorly like in 1929, 1965, 2000, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46135011))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Invesco QQQ Trust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qqq.md): 11 recommend
- [Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vanguard-total-stock-market-etf.md): 11 recommend
- [Vanguard S&P 500 ETF](https://hackerapproved.com/p/voo.md): 10 recommend
- [Vanguard S&P 500 ETF](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vanguard-s-p-500-etf.md): 9 recommend
- [Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vanguard-total-stock-market-index-fund.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "S&P 500 index fund", https://hackerapproved.com/p/s-p-500-index/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).