A satoshi, or “sat” for short, is the smallest unit of the cryptocurrency bitcoin. “Stacking Sats” is a popular term for gradually accumulating bitcoin by purchasing small amounts of bitcoin at a time. (100 million sats = 1 bitcoin.) The idea is that you should be excited about adding any amount to your stack, focusing on that forward progress instead of the current market price.
If only it would be as trendy for folks to “stack VOO” or “stack VTI”. A low-cost S&P 500 or US Total Market index ETF is a tax-efficient way to build up your ownership of a share of excellent American businesses. Unfortunately, there is always something shinier next to this vanilla product. Factor ETFs, themed ETFs, sector ETFs, and so on. John Rekenthaler of Morningstar has an interesting series of articles comparing the long-term returns of various alternatives to Vanguard index funds. See
Even way back in 1992, Vanguard started offering “Value” and “Growth” index funds, essentially splitting the US stock market into two halves based on price/book ratios. Essentially, these were the first variation on the plain S&P 500 index fund. You might think one was better than other. (Most academics would have guessed Value would win.) So what happened over the next 20 years? Not very much! (Plus Growth won slightly.)
Of course, I would not be surprised at all to see Value squeak out a slight win over Growth after another 10 or 20 years. One is always going to be winning slightly, but take a step back and you can argue they are effectively tied. Why not just own the S&P 500 index fund and get the average?
(Quick reminder: The Rule of 72 says that 10% annualized means your money will double every 7.2 years. That means $10,000 will have doubled three times in about 21 years. $10k doubled to $20k, then doubled to $40k, then doubled to $80k!)
What if you
What if you bought a low-cost
As the saying goes, don’t let the pursuit of perfect be the enemy of the good. As someone sitting on a relatively big pile of VTI after 15+ years of stacking it share by share, I am certainly relieved that I didn’t get too distracted by all of the other shiny objects out there. Instead of remembering your
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