iShares ETF Investments List | iShares

So you want to get into ETF investing, and you just don't know where to start, or your portfolio is just full of boring Vanguard funds that everybody else has. And you want to expand a little bit outside of that to something maybe a little bit more exciting. Or maybe you're just here because you want to learn about some great ETFs that can make you 1000s of dollars in the long run. 

Well, you've come to the right place, because that's exactly what we're talking about today. And what better place to start than by talking about the biggest issuer of ETFs in the world, BlackRock, or, as you might know, them by their ticker name iShares. Today, I'm going to walk you through seven of the best iShares index funds that you can invest in. 

In this article, I'm going to reveal my absolute favorite ETF from BlackRock fund, which has made me 10s of 1000s of dollars over the past couple of years. And it's actually been their highest performing ETF over the past five years as well. So Blackrock currently has $2.4 trillion of assets under the management of AUM. It's a lot of money. And it's actually significantly more than any other issue on the market. 

And that's including Vanguard, and a quick fun fact about that $2.4 trillion of AUM is their AUM weighted expense ratio is point one 9%, which means they earn $4.6 billion of fees every year. Now, that's enough for them to go buy lift in cash every single year. And that's lift the entire company, not just a car or fleet of cars, literally the lift, they can go and buy in cash every single year with how much they're making off of the expense ratios. 

So this is an obscene amount of money. It's a really profitable market to be in, and they're just raking it in. But at the same time, they're raking it in they're also providing investors a really great opportunity to make a lot of money and to be passively invested. And there are a lot of benefits for us. So now we get to the age-old question of whether should I buy ETFs, or index funds or stocks or some other financial instrument. 

And I'm actually not going to go into too much depth into that but the most important thing is ETFs are really simple to trade. It allows for great diversification. Generally, they're passive. And they have really low expense ratios. And their fantastic options for new investors index funds are very, very similar. And sometimes they're virtually the same. Just the method that you trade them is a little different. 

So index funds trade on a different exchange, essentially where they only trade once per day. Whereas an ETF operates very similar to a stock where you can trade in and out multiple times per day. And then of course the stock. No, I honestly see stocks as being a little bit more. 

For an advanced investor, it's harder to be diversified, they can carry more risk, which means there's a lot more downside, but there's also more upside. So just know that if that's what you're looking to do. But again, I always recommend ETFs for not only new brand new investors who don't know what they're doing.

But extremely experienced investors, as Warren Buffett has said many times, generally, people fare the best if they just buy and hold great ETFs for the long term, and they will be set for success for the rest of their lives. So definitely what I recommend too. 

The first category is your core ETFs. And these core ETFs should generally make up the bulk of your portfolio. And they're going to track broad indexes like the s&p 500 or the NASDAQ or the Russell 2000. These are generally where you want to have the bulk of your portfolio so I have two core portfolio ETFs I have one dividend ETF one bond ETF, one international ETF and then two sector ETFs. 

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The first core ETF I'm gonna walk you through is iShares Core S&P 500 ETF ($IVV). And this is an ETF that tracks the s&p 500. So IBV is exposure to large established US companies. Its low-cost tax-efficient access to 500 of the largest cap US stocks, and you can use this at the core of your portfolio to seek long-term growth. 

So if we look at the growth of $10,000 over the last 10 years. If you invested 10 years ago your $10,000 would now be worth $38,500 or a 284% gain, and some other really important facts about the fund, the fee structure is incredibly low here, just 0.03%. Some of their top holdings are Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Tesla, etc. So These are the top companies in the s&p 500. And they are weighted appropriately.

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The second core ETF that we're going to look at today is iShares Core S&P Total US Stock Market ETF ($ITOT), So why ITOT? it's a low-cost and convenient access to the total US stock market in a single fund. It has exposure to the total US stock market ranging from some of the smallest to largest companies. 

And again, you can use this at the core of your portfolio to seek long-term growth. So again, this is a really great fund if you want to have a little bit more broad exposure broader than just the s&p 500. So this will allow you access to way more companies and way more diversification than just the s&p 500.

So, if we look at the growth here of $10,000, if you invested 10 years ago, you would have about $38,000, or you'd be up 282%. So again, this is very similar to the s&p 500 ETF we looked at earlier. So that's why these are core ETFs, you know, you don't really need to have both of them or multiple because there's gonna be a ton of overlap between the two. 

So honestly, one of these would be enough as a core ETF in your portfolio. And looking at their fee structure here, again, very similar to the s&p 500 Fund, the expense ratio is incredibly low, just 0.03%. Some of their top holdings are Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Tesla, etc.

The biggest difference here is that instead of just holding about 500 companies or stocks in the portfolio, they'll have 1000s. And as you can see, they actually have 3600, as opposed to just 500.

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The third fund on the list is iShares Core High Dividend ETF($HDV) This is our dividend ETF. And why HDV? So this gives you exposure to established high-quality US companies, it has access to 75 dividend-paying domestic stocks that have been screened for financial health. 

And you can use this at the core of your portfolio to seek income. So really, the main purpose of having a dividend ETF is if you want fixed income coming in every month. So if you need to pull cash out of this without pulling out of your principal, then this will allow you access to some amount of consistent funds every month.

If we look at the growth of a hypothetical $10,000. For this dividend ETF, we can see over the course of 10 years, your $10,000 would have grown to $27,500 or you'd be up 175%. And the fee structure is also incredibly low, just 0.08%. 

Some of the top holdings of this ETF is Exxdn, Abbvie, Johnson & Johnson, Chevron, Verizon, Philip Morris, etc. These are really large & mature companies that are going to be paying great dividends. You can see there's this fund composed of at one of them.

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The fourth ETF on our list is iShares Core US Aggregate Bond ETF ($AGG). So this is our bond ETF. So this will definitely be the least exciting from a performance perspective. Because generally, the idea behind bonds is that it's the most stable. So in economic downturns, generally, you're not going to have the wild swings that you do with other equities. 

So that's why people like to invest in bonds. And, and you might hear that, as people are getting closer to retirement, you might want to shift more and more of your money into bonds, because you have a lot less volatility. So that's really the allure behind bonds. So why AGG?  

AGG gives you broad exposure to US investment-grade bonds. And I'll explain what investment grade is here in a second. And it's a low-cost easy way to diversify a portfolio using fixed income. And again, use it at the core of your portfolio to seek stability and pursue income. 

And as I mentioned, the growth of the hypothetical $10,000 here isn't quite as exciting as the rest, which is expected. So, over the course of 10 years, your $10,000 would only be about 12,000. So you'd be up 18 to 20%. Not all that exciting. 

But I think what's interesting here, if you look at the since inception, which was in 2004, you can see how there's, it's very, very rare that this fund actually decreases in value, which is very different from some of the other ones. So even right in 2020, it had a very brief dip and then was back to the stable. 

Of course, it's not exactly playing out as you would expect right now. So we've had a massive dip But even you know, even in 2007 to 2009, during the, you know, the great financial crisis, it was basically positive, just a very minor blip here and continue to rise. So that's really the allure of bond ETFs. 

And the expense ratio here is also very, very low point zero 3%. You can see their top holdings here, US Treasury, some mortgages, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase. And what's really interesting here is looking at the credit quality, so anything that's BBB and above is going to be your investment grade. 

So these four categories, triple AAA, are your absolute best. And what these ratings mean, this is besically the measure of the risk of whatever company is issuing the bond has to default on their loan or basically go bankrupt. So a AAA rated means there's virtually no chance that these bonds are going to go under or the company is going to be insolvent. So anything above triple B is generally known as investment grade, which means it's extremely safe.

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All right, our fifth ETF from iShares is iShares Core MSCI Total International Stock ETF ($IXUS). So why IXUS? It gives you exposure to a broad range of international developed and emerging market companies. It's low cost and comprehensive access to non-US stocks. 

And again, you can use it at the core of your portfolio to diversify away from the US to seek long-term growth and the hypothetical growth of $10,000. Here, we can't quite get to 10 years because the fund was released in 2013. But over the last nine years, you would be up 63%, or your 10,000 would now be $16,000. 

And the fee structure is also incredibly low at just 0.07%. And you can see some of the top holdings so Taiwan Semiconductor, or TSMC, the biggest semiconductor creator or manufacturer, Nestle, Tencent, Samsung Roche, and a number of other really large international companies. This ETF is composed of 4468 other companies. So again, really broad exposure all over the world here.

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So, the number six ETF on our list is iShares Global Clean Energy ETF ($ICLN), This is our first of two sectors ETFs. So why ICLN? it gives you exposure to companies that produce energy from solar wind and other renewable sources. It has targeted access to clean energy stocks from around the world. And this allows you to gain a global sector view here.

If we look at the hypothetical growth of our $10,000, you can see over the course of 10 years, your $10,000 would now be worth 37,500, or you would be up 274%. So really strong growth here and if we look at the fees, the fee structure here is quite a bit higher than the others that we've looked at. 

And this is because this is generally what you see in Sector ETFs. But really anything under half a percent is still really good. And the fee structure here is 0.42% where I would start to get worried if anything over about 1% is really when you'd want to be a little bit concerned about the expenses you're paying. 

Some of their top holdings are Enphase Energy, Solaredge Technologies, Consolidated Edison, Vestas Wind, Plug power, Xinyi Solar Holdings, etc.

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Now our seventh and final ETFand the second sector ETF is the iShares Semiconductor ETF ($SOXX). This is one of the favorites, my absolute favorite ETFs. I've been invested in this for a long time. And it's made me a lot of money. So, I really happy to have this in my portfolio. 

So why does SOXX is it gives you exposure to US companies that design, manufacture and distribute semiconductors? And it gives you targeted access to domestic semiconductor stocks. And finally looking at our growth of our hypothetical $10,000. You can see that over the course of 10 years, your $10,000 would have gone from 10,000 to over $100,000. 

So you would be up over 900% So absolutely insane, which is why I mentioned this has been one of my favorite investments that I've had. Again, really important to remember previous performance is not indicative of future performance, but I'm still really bullish on semiconductors, and I think that this is still a good ETF to be invested in. 

And then looking at the fee structure here, still fairly low at just point four 3%. And obviously, with that performance that you saw over the past 10 years, they more than justify the little bit of extra expenses here, and their top holdings as you would expect, just the top semiconductor companies in the US, so Broadcom, AMD, and Vidya, Intel, so on and there's about 35 of them that they're invested in.

These are my top 7 investment in the ishares for the 2022 financial services.