The index S&P 500 is the most familiar benchmark among investors. When any investor asks about the conditions of the market today then they are meant only by the S&P 500 index.

Some of the world's largest ETFs are benchmarked to this Index whose assets value collectively more than a trillion. Being tied to the same index, sometimes they are misunderstood to be almost similar but they are not like "SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)" and "Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO)". We have to go into detail to see their differences.

A thorough comparison between SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF) and VOO (Vanguard S&P 500 ETF)

Every investor is very much familiar with these funds investments. The S&P 500 index includes all the famous US companies like Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Coca-Cola (KO), etc. 

When talking about VOO vs SPY, as the investment in both the ETFs is in the same index, looks almost similar but lacks in its expense ratios. The only factor that should be taken into consideration is the ownership total cost when talking about similar ETFs. Through ownership cost, you will be able to decide easily investing in which of them provides more benefit.

Ownership cost includes mainly two factors: expense ratio and trading spread. 

By trading spread we mean from buying the shares to selling them, how much an investor had to pay. The trading spread has an inverse relation with AUM. 

Let's understand this with some points of SPY vs VOO.

1). Trading Spread

In the share market, recently SPY acquired the lowest trading spread among all ETFs which is just 0.002% to 0.003%. The amount generated from this trading spread is almost minimal and matters when regular traders need to seek the difference.

When talking about the VOO, the recent trading spread in the running share market is 0.007%. However, if we see the difference in both trading spreads, it is just some points that hardly make any change in the amount. But sometimes large investments for regular traders could affect this point.

So at this point, SPY wins the race.

2). Total Expenses

When SPY has the lowest trading spread, VOO has the lowest total expenses. The expense ratio of VOO is just 0.03% which is much lesser than the expense ratio of SPY. 0.0945% is the expense ratio of SPY.

If we compare VOO and SPY with these two points, for frequent traders, minimizing trade spread would prefer SPY but total expenses push the SPY back and bring the VOO up.

If we consider the past performances of both the ETFs, VOO is outperforming the SPY nearly by 4%. On an annual basis, it hardly works well.

Conclusion

After seeing the thorough comparison between the SPY and VOO, we can conclude that regular traders should go with the ETF  SPY and those who invest and hardly trade should choose VOO.

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