Why Vanguard 500 Index (VFIAX) Admiral Shares Are a Must-Buy in 2025

The S&P 500’s relentless grind higher makes active managers sweat—here’s why VFIAX still wins.

Low fees? Check. Market-beating returns? Usually.

Vanguard’s flagship index fund slashes costs to the bone while passively riding Wall Street’s golden goose. No stock-picking genius required—just decades of proof that most hedge funds can’t keep up.

The ultimate ‘set-and-forget’ play

While finfluencers hawk crypto moonshots, VFIAX quietly compounds wealth like a boring, reliable machine. Perfect for investors who prefer profits over adrenaline.

The closer: In a world where 80% of active managers underperform, indexing remains the ultimate middle finger to Wall Street’s fee extraction complex.

Image source: Getty Images.

Investing in this fund is like betting on the future of the American economy. As superinvestor Warren Buffett noted back in his 2015 letter to shareholders, " For 240 years it's been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start. America's golden goose of commerce and innovation will continue to lay more and larger eggs."

Here are the fund's recent top holdings:

Stock

Percent of Fund

Source: Morningstar.com, as of June 30, 2025.

The top 10 holdings together made up about 37% of the whole fund -- because the S&P 500 index is market-cap weighted. That means larger companies will MOVE the needle more than smaller companies.

You can buy into the S&P 500 in another way through Vanguard, too -- via its(VOO 0.37%). It's an exchange-traded fund (ETF) -- a fund that trades like a stock, which can make it easier for many people to invest in it. If you invest in the mutual fund through Vanguard, you may be facing a $3,000 minimum investment requirement, but you can buy into the ETF with just a few dollars -- or hundreds of thousands.