A $10,000 SPY investment at its 1993 launch would have compounded to $312,667 today, representing a 3,027% gain without adding a single dollar. SPY's 0.0945% expense ratio costs roughly three times more than VOO or IVV, a gap that quietly compounds against long-term buy-and-hold investors. RSP owns the same 500 stocks as SPY but weights each equally, cutting megacap dominance and serving as a hedge against a leadership rotation.
Two retirees, same $1 million, same 4% rule, buy one finished with $1.4 million, the other hit $0 in 12 years. Our free reader guide explains the flaw that separated them, and the income-first method built to avoid it. A $10,000 stake placed in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY) on its opening day in January 1993 would be worth roughly $312,667 today.
That works out to a 3,027% cumulative gain, or about 10.8% a year compounded across 33 years. No stock picking, no market timing, no additional contributions. The math is a useful reminder that the return engine for most household portfolios sits inside plain S&P 500 exposure.
The question in 2026 is which vehicle delivers that exposure most efficiently. Below are the four peers worth considering: Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:VOO), iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:IVV), SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPYM), and the one fund that tracks a different weighting of the same index, Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (NYSEARCA:RSP). SPY was the first U.S.-listed ETF, and State Street's decision to wrap the S&P 500 in an exchange-traded package created the template every subsequent index fund has copied.
The portfolio holds all 500 constituents in the same weights as the index, so its returns track the benchmark to within a rounding error before fees. Every retiree knows about the 4% rule, but it frames retirement as a slow liquidation and still causes retirees with seven-figure accounts to agonize over a dinner out. There's a different way to run the math that makes more sense today.
Build an income floor — dividends, interest, and Social Security that cover your essential bills every month — and you never have to sell shares into a down market just to pay them. Our free reader guide, The 4% Rule Is Broken, walks through it in about 15 minutes. Concentration at the top of the index has climbed sharply.
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