David Dierking, The Motley Fool
Sat, May 16, 2026 astatine 9:20 AM CDT 4 min read
While Warren Buffett has endorsed a worth benignant of investing for decades, the different happening helium often advocates for is simplicity. He's not a predominant trader oregon chasing the adjacent blistery thing, and helium doesn't marque exotic bets. He simply invests successful durable, long-lasting businesses and lets them bash their thing.
This aforesaid conception applies to retail investors. By gathering a portfolio astir large, financially steadfast companies, you tin acceptable yourself up for years of semipermanent wealthiness creation. In a 2013 missive to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett said the following:
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Put 10% of the currency successful short-term authorities bonds and 90% successful a precise low-cost S&P 500 scale fund. (I suggest Vanguard's.) I judge the trust's semipermanent results from this argumentation volition beryllium superior to those attained by astir investors.
Buffett couldn't beryllium overmuch clearer than that. He believes investors should person the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) successful their portfolios.
Key takeaways
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VOO tracks the S&P 500, charges conscionable 0.03% annually, and has grown to much than $950 cardinal successful assets, making it 1 of the largest concern funds successful the world.
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Q1 2026 S&P 500 net are connected gait to turn by astir 28% twelvemonth implicit year, the champion effect since 2021.
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Buffett designed a 90/10 model truthful non-expert investors could execute results that outperform astir nonrecreational managers without the outgo oregon complexity.
Why Buffett's investing principles inactive use
Many investors are overweight tech and maturation stocks close now, whether that's via an ETF targeting 1 of those themes oregon conscionable done an S&P 500 ETF. The index's 33% tech allocation is substantially higher than it was conscionable a decennary ago, erstwhile it accounted for astir 20% of assets.
But implicit time, the S&P 500's assemblage allocation adjusts to wherever the system is moving. At antithetic points implicit the past fewer decades, tech, energy, and financials were the biggest idiosyncratic assemblage holdings. Investing successful the S&P 500 doesn't necessitate marketplace timing oregon predominant trading. Its simplicity is its biggest selling point. It's genuinely a semipermanent buy-and-hold scale that allows investors to seizure the U.S. economical maturation engine.
Buffett acknowledges that astir radical shouldn't beryllium trying to prime idiosyncratic winners. Even astir nonrecreational wealth managers neglect to bash it connected a accordant basis. By simply investing successful the scale via the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, you get semipermanent maturation imaginable with rock-bottom fees.

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