The biggest S&P 500 index-based ETF is SPY, and I highly recommend it. The second biggest one is IVV, but I've seen some desyncing in the past, so I don't recommend it (it's more expensive anyway, and if you options trade, it's not as well-priced as SPY's).
Buy the SPY ETF stock if you can, but if you can't afford it (since it's almost hitting $200/share), consider researching and looking into options trading. Buy long-term call options for SPY, and hold them. Sell the options contracts once you've earned quite a bit on them.
I"m still just learning about all of this but yes that's what i think too, all I am finding are the ETF's. Is it surprising that they wouldn't offer such a large index fund? Can anyone just buy into an S&P stock from a brokerage firm? I feel like I'm missing something obvious :/
Indexes are not "stocks." You invest in a index fund either in the form of a regular mutual fund (like VFINX) or an exchange-traded fund (like SPY). You can invest in mutual funds directly from the fund company (Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, etc.). To invest in an ETF or individual stocks, you'll first have to open a brokerage IRA account.
The symbol for the ETF is SPY. There are 500 companies that have both American and internation presence is a very wide variety of sectors.
Not sure if Merill Lynch offers their own s&p500 index.
But you could try one of these:
SPY - s&p500 etf.
VFINX - Vanguard's s&p500 index
FSMKX - Fidelity's s&p500 index
PREIX - TR Price's s&p500 index
I am finally opening a roth and i want to put most of it into an index fund, like the S&P 500 but every time I look for that stock symbol on merill edge - it just lists a bunch of specific S&P stocks (i.e. commercial, agriculture, health care, industrial) I thought the S&P 500 was composed of american stocks in various industries (the whole diversification thing) am I missing something???
