hey friends if you're looking to invest in the S&P 500 and the US Stock Market from Australia then you came to the right place today we're going through the easiest ways to get started what to watch out for and how to make sure your Investments are working hard for you so let's get into it and if you are new here hi I'm Queenie and I'm a licensed personal finance Creator and your go-to guide for helping make your money work harder for you whether it's Investing For the First Time and making progress towards Financial Freedom my goal is to help you build the life of your dreams just remember that this video contains general advice only and not personal financial advice if you would like personal financial advice it's a good idea to reach out to a financial adviser you can read my full Financial Services guide in the description this video is sponsored by pe which is the investing app that I use but I'll talk more about them later in this video and I do have a link below my subscription if you would like a $20 credit with per so you've probably heard of the term the S&P 500 before but what actually is it simply put it's a list of America's top 500 companies and it represents a massive 80% of the total US Stock Market investing in the S&P 500 is a popular choice because you get diversification because you're not just betting on one company you're investing in a mix of different companies in Tech Healthcare and finance it's also low effort because with ETFs you don't have to spend time picking individual stocks it's also had really great long-term performance and fun fact even Warren Buffett who was one of the richest people in the world is a fan of the S&P 500 he's even directed that 90% of his wealth is invested in the S&P 500 after he's gone so if it's good enough for one of of the best investors in the world then it's worth a thought right and now let's get practical how can you actually invest in the S&P 500 from Australia there are three main ways the first one is by getting an ETF on the ASX and the ASX is show for the Australian stock exchange you can look for options like ivv or spy on the ASX these are Australian listed ETFs that track the performance of the S&P 500 so it allows you to invest in Australian dollars without any extra foreign exchange fees and fun fact did you know that IV is the second most popular ETF among PE investors the second way is by buying an ETF on the US Stock Market platforms like PE actually give you direct access to the US Stock Exchange so you can buy an option like vo or spy the US version the only downsides are you will need to fill out a wben form for tax purposes and you will be investing in USD so you'll need to pay currency exchange fees in order to convert your Australian dollars into us do and the third option is with manage funds these are easy to use but usually come with higher fees compared to ETFs now let's do a comparison of the most popular S&P 500 ETFs so we'll be comparing ivv vo and spy so as we can see here both ivv and spy are both listed on the Australian stock exchange but vo isn't listed on the Australian stock exchange the management fees for these ETFs are 0.04% for ivb 0.03% for vo and 0.09% for spy the performance for these ETFs are similar but a tiny bit different ivv has had an average annual return of 14.96% per year V has had an average annual return of 14.92% and spy has had an average annual return of 14.90% this is the average annual return over 5 years which is really high because the stock market has had amazing performance over the last 5 years the divid and yields are quite similar at 1.48% for ivv 1.46% for vo and 1 for 5% for spy all three of these ETFs are quite liquid which means it's very easy to buy and sell these ETFs on the stock exchanges and fun fact spy is actually the oldest ETF so here are some things to consider both ivv and spy are directly available on the ASX however vo requires access to the US Stock Exchange vo has the lowest management fee of 0.03% followed by ivv at 0.04% the performance for all three of these ETFs is almost ident itical since they are tracking the S&P 500 so it really just depends on which one you prefer to pick here are some other options to invest in the US stuff exchange that aren't S&P 500 atfs just so that you have some different options there's BTS which is the Vanguard us total Stock Market ETF the management fees for this ETF are really low at 0.03% and this ETF is different from the S&P 500 because instead of investing in 500 of the top companies in the US this ATF invests in the top 4,000 companies in the US however the top Holdings are very similar to the S&P 500 ETFs the top Holdings for this ETF are Apple Nvidia Microsoft Amazon meta and mole and when you compare it to ivv the top Holdings are identical IV's top Holdings are Apple Nvidia Microsoft Amazon meta and ball if you invested $10,000 into VTS 5 years ago you would have $2,023 today one thing to mention about BTS is it does have more diversification compared to the S&P 500 100 ETF because there are more companies that make up this ETF another popular us ETF is ndq which is the betaar NASDAQ 100 ETF instead of investing in the top 500 companies in the US or the top 4,000 companies in the US this ETF invests in the top 100 companies on the NASDAQ which is a US index that mainly focuses on technology companies but with this ETF there's more exposure to the really big technology companies compared to the other ETFs one thing to note though about ndq is that there's less diversification in this ETF since it only invests in 100 companies compared to 500 or 4,000 the average annual return for ndq is 2.19% over 5 years so now we know some different ETF options here's how you can actually invest step by step with PE so first just go into the PE app and then click on invest in AU shares I'm going to invest in ivv although you could also invest in spy but I'm just going to invest in ivv here it has more information about this ETF and to buy it I simply click buy can put in how much I would like to invest for example $1,000 and then to buy it I simply click on next and then place order you can even invest in US ETFs with PE so to buy a US ETF I simply click on invest in US shares here I can search for the ETF I would like to buy for example vo I simply click on buy and then place order and if you would like to try P for yourself you can use my code Queeny for a $20 credit there's a QR code Cod here so you can download peer and I also have popped a link in the description below and if you've made it this far you can comment steady growth so that I know you watch this video all the way through and if you would like more ETF options you can check out this video up here thank you see you