ETF pricing question

Hey @shahgols , I'm not new to investing, but I am still a novice, so don't put too much weight on my opinion.

You should note that VFIAX is a mutual fund whereas VOO is an ETF. Mutual funds and ETFs have some similarities, but they also have important differences.

I don't think the price per share should factor into your decision. I don't have much knowledge about how to evaluate a mutual fund, but for ETFs two of the things that are most important to me are:

1) How well is it tracking its index? (eg- If an ETF claims to track the S&P 500 than you should look to see how good of a job it's done over the last 10 years). VOO has done an excellent job of tracking.

2) Management fees. You can find this by looking at the "Expense Ratio". VOO has an expense ratio of .03 which is very good.

If you would like to learn more about ETFs and how to evaluate them, a site that has been very helpful for me is etf.com . They have a plethora of great information and some learning resources: https://www.etf.com/etf-education-ce.html

Best of luck!

 

Don't get too caught up in the price of what you're buying. Equity prices are not like grocery store prices, where you can compare (for example) different brands of chewing gums to find the best value. Especially with index equities, if the S&P 500 goes up 5%, then any index that tracks the S&P 500 should also go up 5%, no matter what the starting price. In other words, more shares would not equal more gain (or loss).

 

Honestly speaking, from your question you appear to be completely new to investing, (and to the type of securities which may range from mutual funds, index funds, ETFs and basic equities.)

Before playing around with your hard earned money, please read through the different types of securities to understand their difference and then proceed to invest or trade with your money.
A good article that explains the ETF, Index Fund and Mutual fund with real-life examples is http://www.finance-trading-times.com/2007/07/index-funds-vs-exchange-traded.html and http://invest-n-trade.blogspot.com/2007/07/etf-exchange-traded-fund-example.html

 

Well, honestly, I'm gonna turn the tables on ya and ask YOU if there are other factors a prospective ETF investor needs to consider after you've perused the ETF guide that @TheSmelloscope provided!

I confess that I am not an ETF investor and don't know a lot about them. I use some of the index ETFs as hedge instruments, but what I look for in those are liquidity and narrow spreads on the weekly and monthly options contracts, so I am using those few ETFs that meet those criteria in really short-termed, tactical scenarios. The only ETF I currently own long (again, for hedging purposes and to allow even more complex counter- (and sometimes counter-counter-)hedging via options) is TZA, the Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3x Shares ETF. I couldn't recommend TZA for any reason other than creating option hedges, because other than option liquidity, I never considered any other criteria (like expense ratio, leveraging, indexing methodology, redemption, net asset value, and so on).