Your Favorite S&P 500 ETF Won't Give You Exposure to These 4 Great Stocks

2025-02-20 07:51:00 ET

The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) market index is pretty broad. It tracks the performance of roughly 500 stocks, hand-picked by an expert panel to reflect the large-cap portion of the American stock market.

The index is often seen as an accurate barometer of the stock market as a whole. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that copy the S&P 500 index returns are among the most popular and heavily traded names on the market. The SPDR S&P 500 Trust (NYSEMKT: SPY) has more assets under management than any other ETF. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) comes next, followed by the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: IVV) . These are the only ETFs worth more than $600 billion each. No other fund reaches the $500 billion level today.

But the S&P 500 doesn't look at every big-name, large-cap stock. Some surprising names are not components of this popular index, so the funds listed above won't give you any exposure to them.

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