If you want to make investing easy on yourself, one of the best ways to do it is by buying an ETF that tracks the S 500. By purchasing shares of an exchange-traded fund like the Vanguard 500 Index ETF or the SPDR S 500 ETF, you can gain instant access to a diversified group of 500 of the biggest U.S. companies.

It's not easy to beat the S 500. In fact, most hedge funds and mutual funds underperform the S 500 over an extended period of time. That's because the S 500 selects from a large pool of stocks and continuously refreshes its holdings, dumping underperformers and replacing them with up-and-coming growth stocks.

For example, the index just swapped aging appliance maker Whirlpool for the explosive AI server company Super Micro Computer. Owning only profitable, large-cap U.S. stocks is another reason why the S 500 tends to be such a strong performer over time.

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Source Fool.com