There is something funny about investing.
Most people are not interested in an asset when it looks boring. They become interested after it has already done incredibly well.
That is not a criticism. It is just human nature.
When something has gone up for years, the story becomes easier to believe. The chart looks clean. The returns look obvious. Everyone starts talking about it. Suddenly, the investment that nobody cared about a decade ago becomes the one everyone says you “must own”.
The S&P 500 is a good example of this.
Looking at the Vanguard S&P 500 UCITS ETF, the numbers are genuinely impressive. Over roughly 14 years, the fund shows a total return of around 574%, with a compound annual growth rate of about 14.58%.
That is exceptional.
A £10,000 investment turning into something closer to £67,000 over that period is exactly why people become obsessed with US growth. It is also why the S&P 500 has become the default answer for a lot of investors.
And to be fair, there is a good reason for that.
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You are buying exposure to some of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world. Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet and many others. These are global businesses, not just American businesses. They dominate technology, advertising, cloud computing, payments, software and artificial intelligence.
So no, I am not here to say the S&P 500 is bad.
It clearly is not.
