9 Best Fidelity Index Funds to Buy

Fidelity has earned much of its reputation on the back of its well-run actively managed mutual funds. But Fidelity’s index funds should be given their due.

At a time when prices on just about everything seem to be going up, Fidelity index funds’ prices have remained both stable and low. Indeed, many of Fidelity’s indexed products charge paper-thin fees—often at or at least near the bottom of their category—and a handful are actually free.

They also keep investing cheap in another way that only a select few other fund providers can brag: investment minimums. You see, even funds with extremely small expense fees can sometimes require an initial investment in the thousands of dollars. But dozens of Fidelity index funds have no investment minimums whatsoever—you can get started for as little as one buck.

The best Fidelity index funds, of course, boast all of these qualities—all while tracking well-built indexes that should give their funds an elevated chance of success. Today, I’m going to introduce you to several Fidelity products that check off all these boxes.

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. These securities appear for your consideration and not as personalized investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.

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Why Fidelity?

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Fidelity is a leader in mutual funds (and ETFs, for that matter) and has been a force in the industry since the launch of its Fidelity Puritan Fund (FPURX) back in 1947.

Today, this premier mutual fund company has more than $15 trillion in assets under administration thanks in large part to the success of its talented fund managers. Most notably, that includes Peter Lynch, the longtime manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund (FMAGX) who averaged an incredible 29.2% per year between 1977 and 1990. 

However, while Fidelity first built its name on actively managed funds, over the past three decades, the firm has built out its low-cost and even no-cost index funds as part of the movement to reduce expense ratios and transaction costs for individual investors. And I’m going to talk about the latter with you today.

Why Index Funds?

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An index fund is run not by one or more human managers making investment selections, but by a rules-based benchmark called an “index” that measures the performance of a group of assets. An index fund “tracks” the index by actually investing in all (or in some cases, a representative sampling of) the underlying assets. An index’s strategy can be broad, like the S&P 500, which measures a wide assortment of American companies. Or the focus can be as narrow as, say, high-quality pastry makers headquartered in the United Kingdom.

While I don’t necessarily recommend buying my hypothetical Great British Bake-Off Index Fund, I do recommend buying index funds in general, for a few reasons.

They’re typically cheaper because you’re not paying managers to research and select investments. An index fund technically has a manager overseeing the fund, but they’re not performing stock research and deciding on trades—the index’s rules determine those actions. Thus, fund providers can afford to charge (often much) lower fees index funds.

Index funds tend to perform well, too, compared to comparable actively managed funds. I’ll provide a pretty stark example later, but just know that human managers often struggle to beat the benchmark indexes. So, if you have a fund that cheaply tracks a benchmark index, and many human managers can’t even beat that benchmark index … that index fund starts to look awfully good.

Also worth noting? Turnover—how much the fund tends to buy and sell holdings—is often extremely low in index funds, as only a handful of holdings tend to enter or leave the underlying index in a given year. As a result, they typically make little to no capital gains distributions at the end of the year. The Fidelity funds I’m about to detail all sport minimal turnover, which makes them very tax-efficient investments for taxable brokerage accounts.

How Were the Best Fidelity Index Funds Selected?

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While Fidelity offers a few hundred mutual funds, the lion’s share of those are actively managed. Even then, we’re still starting at a group of more than 60 Fidelity index mutual funds, and while diversification is important, no investment basket needs that many eggs.

So, I started my search with a quality screen, including only Fidelity index funds that have earned a Gold Morningstar Medalist rating.

Unlike Morningstar’s Star ratings, which are based upon past performance, Morningstar Medalist ratings are a forward-looking analytical view of a fund. Per Morningstar:

“For actively managed funds, the top three ratings of Gold, Silver, and Bronze all indicate that our analysts expect the rated investment vehicle to produce positive alpha relative to its Morningstar Category index over the long term, meaning a period of at least five years. For passive strategies, the same ratings indicate that we expect the fund to deliver alpha relative to its Morningstar Category index that is above the lesser of the category median or zero over the long term.”

As I’ve written in other Young and the Invested articles, a Medalist rating doesn’t mean Morningstar is necessarily bullish on the underlying asset class or categorization. It’s merely an expression of confidence in the fund compared to its peers.

Fidelity actually has a couple dozen Gold-rated index funds, but several of them are specific share classes that are only available to certain subsets of investors—those enrolled in Fidelity Wealth Services, for instance, or those enrolled in eligible employer-sponsored retirement plans. So I’ve further narrowed the list to only Investor-class index funds, which are available to just about anyone.

Importantly, these funds typically offer no investment minimums, meaning you can get started for as little as one dollar.

From the remaining universe of funds, I’ve selected some core and satellite offerings that exemplify the best Fidelity has to offer.

Related: 10 Best Fidelity Funds You Can Own in 2025

The Best Fidelity Index Funds to Buy

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Every index fund on this list, in addition to being Gold-rated, is as friendly on the wallet as you could ask for. Specifically, the best Fidelity index funds boast:

• Extremely low fees. Specifically, their fees are in the bottom 20% of all funds in their Morningstar Category.
• No investment minimums. Many mutual fund providers have investment minimums in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. But these funds allow you to buy with whatever you’ve got—even if that’s just a lonely greenback.

Let’s get started!

1. Fidelity 500 Index Fund

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• Style: U.S. large-cap stock
• Assets under management: $631.6 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.3%
• Expense ratio: 0.015%, or 15¢ per year for every $1,000 invested

It’s one of Fidelity’s best mutual funds overall, so naturally, Fidelity 500 Index Fund (FXAIX) also belongs among Fidelity’s best index mutual funds.

If a major mutual fund provider’s lineup includes a cheap S&P 500 index fund, chances are it’ll be one of their best-rated funds. Here’s the logic. The S&P 500 Index is commonly used as a performance benchmark for mutual funds that invest in U.S.-based large-cap stocks. But the majority of fund managers who run these funds typically struggle to beat their benchmark. Indeed, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices, the majority of active large-cap U.S. equity funds had failed to beat the S&P 500 in 21 of the past 24 years on a total-return basis (price plus dividends) … and fund managers were on track to underperform yet again in 2024.

So, if you can’t beat it, join it.

Fidelity 500 Index Fund tracks the S&P 500—a collection of some of the largest American companies, but to clarify, not the 500 largest American companies. To be included in this index, a company must have a market capitalization of at least $20.5 billion (up from $18 billion after a 2025 rule change), its shares must be highly liquid (shares are frequently bought and sold), and at least 50% of its outstanding shares must be available for public trading, among other criteria. A company must also have positive earnings in the most recent quarter, and the sum of its previous four quarters must be positive—two traits that weed out at least a few massive firms that would otherwise be included.

Note: Once a company becomes an S&P 500 component, it’s not automatically kicked out if it fails to meet all of the criteria. However, the selection committee would take this under consideration and possibly boot the company.

People like to consider the S&P 500 a reflection of the U.S. economy. But it’s hardly a perfect representation. For instance, the technology sector accounts for almost a third of FXAIX’s assets. Real estate, materials, and utilities merit less than 3% apiece. This is in no small part because, like many indexes, the S&P 500 is market capitalization-weighted, which means the greater the size of the company, the more “weight” it’s given in the index. Currently, trillion-dollar-plus companies Apple (AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA), and Microsoft (MSFT) sit atop Fidelity 500 Index Fund’s holdings list.

Turnover, which is how much the fund tends to buy and sell holdings, is always low, given that only a handful of stocks enter or leave the index in any given year. This tamps down (and often eliminates) capital-gains distributions, which receive unfavorable tax treatment. This makes FXAIX an extremely tax-efficient option for taxable brokerage accounts.

It’s this combination of traits—the S&P 500’s excellence as an index, bare-bones costs, and tax efficiency—that earn FXAIX a Gold Medalist rating from Morningstar. That makes this one of the best Fidelity index funds to buy, especially if you’re building the core of your portfolio.

Want to learn more about FXAIX? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 7 Best Fidelity Index Funds for Beginners in 2025

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2. Fidelity ZERO Large Cap Index Fund

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• Style: U.S. large-cap stock
• Assets under management: $12.1 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.1%
• Expense ratio: None

An S&P 500 fund isn’t the only way to get large-cap exposure—there are also a host of actively traded and index large-cap “blend” funds to choose from.

But Fidelity ZERO Large Cap Index Fund (FNILX) stands out in a crowd, for a number of reasons. It also has a Gold Medalist rating. It actually has a performance edge over FXAIX across its modest lifetime. And most conspicuously, it’s free.

Fidelity ZERO Large Cap Index is part of the Fidelity ZERO lineup of funds. They charge no annual expenses and have zero minimum investment requirements. The catch? You can only buy them through an individual Fidelity account, such as a brokerage or individual retirement account (IRA). 

FNILX doesn’t track the S&P 500—it tracks a proprietary Fidelity large-cap index that’s weighted by  float-adjusted market capitalization. Float-adjusted market cap weighting accounts only for market capitalization based on the “float,” which is shares available for public trading. It doesn’t consider private or non-transferable shares. Still, the end result is “the biggest companies have the biggest effect on fund performance.”

While this Fidelity index fund might not try to replicate the S&P 500, it does an awfully good impersonation nonetheless. FNILX holds a little more than 500 stocks, virtually entirely domestic and predominantly large-cap, though about 20% of the portfolio is invested in larger mid-caps. It’s also chock-full of tech companies, weighting the sector at nearly a third of assets. Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft are the largest holdings, too, at weights similar to what they command in FXAIX.

Fidelity ZERO Large Cap Index doesn’t have a long track record, given that it launched in 2018. But it has beaten its category average and Morningstar index, on an average annual basis, over the trailing one-, three-, and five-year periods. More interestingly, its cumulative five-year total return is better than FXAIX’s by roughly a percentage point.

Want to learn more about FNILX? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 10 Best Dividend Stocks to Buy in 2025

3. Fidelity Mid Cap Index Fund

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• Style: U.S. mid-cap stock
• Assets under management: $39.6 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.2%
• Expense ratio: 0.025%, or 25¢ per year for every $1,000 invested

Mid-cap stocks are a way to thread the needle between the relative size and stability of large-cap stocks and the high growth potential of small-cap stocks. Indeed, this ideal middle ground has earned mid-caps the nickname of “Goldilocks” stocks.

“In any given 1-year rolling period since 2003, small-, mid-, and large-cap stocks have outperformed 33%, 26%, and 41% of the time,” investment company Hennessy Funds said in a 2023 research note. “However, the longer mid-cap stocks are held, the more often they outperformed. In fact, 60% of the time, mid-caps outperformed small- and large-cap stocks over any 10-year rolling period in the past 20 years.”

Better still? During the 20-year period (through 9/30/23) that Hennessy studied, it found that while mid-caps delivered higher risk than large caps, they delivered better returns … and they generated both lower risk and higher returns than small caps.

Fidelity Mid Cap Index Fund (FSMDX) is an exceedingly cost-efficient way to tap this area of the market. FSMDX tracks the Russell MidCap Index, which is made up of the 800 smallest stocks in the Russell 1000 (which is itself an index of the U.S. market’s 1,000 largest stocks). As a result, you’re getting exposure to 800-plus mostly mid-cap stocks—the fund typically is 75% weighted in mids, with another 5%-10% in smaller large caps, and another 10%-15% in larger small caps.

That might sound odd. But it’s actually common for 20%-30% of a mid-cap fund’s holdings to bleed into small- and/or large-company territory, and some funds invest even more outside of mid-caps. Where FSMDX stands out is that it “tends to go higher up the market-cap ladder than other mid-cap indexes, favoring large-cap stocks that tend to be more established than mid-cap stocks,” Morningstar says.

Sector weights will naturally change over time as certain businesses come into and go out of favor, but right now, industrials are tops at 18%, followed by financials (17%), information technology (13%), and consumer discretionary stocks (10%). Also, thanks to both the market cap-weighting of the Russell MidCap Index and the high number of holdings, single-stock risk is minimal—the only stock it weights at more than 1% is Palantir Technologies (PLTR), which rocketed 340% higher in 2024 to a market cap well in excess of $100 billion, and thus is likely to be pulled from the Russell MidCap Index (and thus FSMDX) when the index reconstitutes in June 2025.

A sound methodology for Wall Street’s mid-sized companies, dirt-cheap fee, and strong historical performance all make FSMDX one of the best Fidelity index funds you can buy.

Want to learn more about FSMDX? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 7 Best Vanguard Index Funds for Beginners in 2025

4. Fidelity Total Market Index Fund

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• Style: U.S. all-cap stock
• Assets under management: $107.4 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.2%
• Expense ratio: 0.015%, or 15¢ per year for every $1,000 invested

Who says you can’t have it all?

That’s the idea behind total-market funds like the Fidelity Total Market Index Fund (FSKAX). The fund, which tries to replicate the Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index, holds nearly 3,900 stocks. That’s not the whole U.S. stock market, but it’s mighty close, and more than enough for the average investor.

A total-market fund typically won’t give you equal exposure to all the different stock sizes—they’re typically market cap-weighted, which naturally means they’re heavily tilted toward large caps. And so it is with FSKAX, which currently invests a little more than 70% of assets in large caps, another 20% in mid-caps, and the remainder into small caps.

If you don’t like Fidelity Total Market Index’s ratio of large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks, you’re better off using a blend of market cap-specific funds to get the proportions you prefer.

However, if you want all of your U.S. stock exposure in one fund, products like FSKAX are for you. They ensure that while you do have some access to growthier smalls and mids, you’re still primarily invested in relatively stable large companies. And they typically do so for a song—FSKAX is particularly cheap, at 1.5 basis points annually. (A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.) Throw in a Gold Morningstar Medalist rating—awarded for its excellent investment process and paper-thin fees—and FSKAX is one of the best Fidelity index funds to buy for your portfolio core.

Want to learn more about FSKAX? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 10 Mighty Monthly Dividend Stocks to Buy in 2025

5. Fidelity ZERO Total Market Index Fund

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• Style: U.S. all-cap stock
• Assets under management: $25.7 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.2%
• Expense ratio: None

Here we have a second example of where, if you have access to Fidelity’s ZERO funds, it’s paying off.

Fidelity ZERO Total Market Index (FZROX) is another Gold-rated Fidelity total-market fund, this one tracking a proprietary Fidelity index that looks an awful lot like its fee-charging cousin’s tracking index. The biggest difference is a smaller portfolio—but at 2,600 stocks, it’s still an acceptably wide coverage area for someone looking to own “the whole market.”

Past that, though, the ratio of large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks is almost identical, as are top holdings, as are sector weightings.

Given how little Fidelity Total Market Index charges, you’re not saving much by owning FZROX—just the 1.5 basis points. But that, as well as any slight differences in the portfolio, is enough to translate into a slight historical performance edge (again, roughly 1 percentage point cumulatively over the past five years) versus FSKAX.

Want to learn more about FZROX? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 13 Dividend Kings for Royally Resilient Income

6. Fidelity Total International Index Fund

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• Style: International all-cap stock
• Assets under management: $13.5 billion
• Dividend yield: 2.9%
• Expense ratio: 0.06%, or 60¢ per year for every $1,000 invested

If you’re looking for a little exposure to stocks outside of the U.S. … good! You should! Yes, U.S. markets have long been among the most productive in the world, and if you believe in the American economy’s ability to keep growing, that should remain the case—and thus, most experts would tell you to own primarily U.S. stock and bond funds.

But those same experts would tell you that it’s worth having at least some international exposure. And you can do that for cheap through Fidelity Total International Index Fund (FTIHX). 

Fidelity Total International Index tries to replicate the performance of the MSCI ACWI (All Country World Index) ex USA Investable Market Index. This market-cap weighted index is designed to provide exposure to stocks of all sizes across both developed (mature, slow-growth) and emerging (volatile but higher-growth) markets. 

Like with most index funds, Fidelity Total International Index Fund hardly does any of this equally. Geographically speaking, this Fidelity mutual fund favors developed markets, including Japan (15%), the U.K. (9%), and Canada (8%). From a company-size perspective, it’s predominantly large-cap in nature—nearly 80% of the portfolio is invested in big, blue-chip international firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) and Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk (NVO). That’s common for international funds, and it tends to result in higher dividend yields than comparable U.S. large-cap funds—and sure enough, FTIHX’s nearly 3% yield is more than double the S&P 500’s.

It is worth noting that while Fidelity Total International Index Fund does enjoy a Morningstar Gold medalist rating, that’s largely on the merits of its dirt-cheap investment fee. FTIHX’s historical performance has been more mixed—generally good, though it has wavered at times, and it has certainly not been excellent.

Want to learn more about FTIHX? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 9 Best Dividend Stocks for Beginners in 2025

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7. Fidelity U.S. Bond Index Fund

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• Style: U.S. intermediate-term core bond
• Assets under management: $61.0 billion
• SEC yield: 4.5%*
• Expense ratio: 0.025%, or 25¢ per year for every $1,000 invested

Most investors need some exposure to bonds, which is debt that’s issued by governments, companies, and other entities. Their interest payments and relative lack of volatility make them an excellent tool for providing a portfolio with stability and income. But how much bond exposure you need will vary by age—because they’re better at protecting wealth than growing it, people typically start with little in the way of bond holdings earlier in life, then gradually hold more bonds as they get closer to (and into) retirement.

But individual bonds can be a hassle. Data and research on individual issues is much thinner than it is for publicly traded stocks. And some bonds have minimum investments in the tens of thousands of dollars. But you can blunt these problems by purchasing a bond fund, which allows you to invest in hundreds or even thousands of bonds with a single click—and, in many cases, very low fees.

The Fidelity U.S. Bond Index Fund (FXNAX) tries to replicate the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. Nicknamed simply “the Agg,” it’s arguably the king of bond indexes; hundreds of billions of dollars are invested in funds that track this benchmark.

FXNAX provides exposure to a few core, investment-grade debt assets. U.S. Treasuries are tops at about 45% of assets, followed by corporate bonds and pass-through mortgage-backed securities (MBSes) at roughly 25% apiece. Past that, there are sprinkles of U.S. agency bonds, foreign sovereign debt, commercial MBSes, and other debt. This diversification makes it a prime core bond holding.

Fidelity U.S. Bond Index Fund’s debt ranges in maturity from just a few months to more than 20 years, but on average, portfolio maturity sits around eight years. Duration—a measure of interest-rate sensitivity—is slightly below six years. That implies that if interest rates rose by 1 percentage point, the fund would decline by 6%, and vice versa. (The actual calculation of duration, which involves weighted averaging of the bond’s cash flows, is more complex than that, but it’s a reasonable enough simplification that helps investors understand the greater the duration, the greater the interest-rate risk.)

Of course, part of the reason FXNAX ranks among Fidelity’s best index funds is its costs. The product’s 0.025% expense ratio is a tiny fraction of the average intermediate-term bond fund’s 0.55% annual fee.

* SEC yield reflects the interest earned across the most recent 30-day period. This is a standard measure for funds holding bonds and preferred stocks.

Want to learn more about FXNAX? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 7 Best High-Dividend ETFs to Buy in 2025 [Income-Hungry Investors]

8. Fidelity Short-Term Treasury Bond Index Fund

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• Style: Short-term government bond
• Assets under management: $3.0 billion
• SEC yield: 4.3%
• Expense ratio: 0.03%, or 30¢ per year for every $1,000 invested

Stocks aren’t the only asset with varying levels of risk and potential reward. Bonds can run the gamut, too.

You can find some of the safest plays in the bond world in Fidelity Short-Term Treasury Bond Index Fund (FUMBX). This Fidelity index fund focuses on bonds that are considered low-risk for a pair of reasons: their short maturities, and their issuer (the U.S. Treasury).

Maturity is a major factor in determining bond risk. As a general rule, the longer the bond, the greater the risk that the bond might not be repaid. Interest rates matter, too. When rates go higher, new bonds pay more, which tempt people to sell their old bonds for the new, higher-paying bonds. But the temptation is much greater when you’re dealing with longer-term bonds with lots of payments remaining—and not so great for short-term bonds with one or just a couple payments left.

And it’s tough to ask for a better issuer. U.S. Treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, and as a result, they’re among the highest-rated bonds on the planet. While there’s no 100% guarantee they’ll be repaid, there’s a far higher likelihood of repayment than the vast majority of issuers out there.

FUMBX invests in a tight grouping of just more than 100 Treasury bond issues whose maturities span a few months to five years. That’s a bit longer-term than some other Treasury funds that limit their maturities to three years. But it still results in a portfolio average maturity of under three years, which is plenty short. Duration is just 2.6 years. That means FUMBX would fall just 2.6% in response to a 1-percentage-point hike in interest rates. Conversely, it would only rise that much on a similar decline in rates.

But that’s OK, as long as you know what you’re buying! If all you want is portfolio protection that can still generate some yield (at ~4% currently), FUMBX is one of the best Fidelity index funds you can buy.

Want to learn more about FUMBX? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 9 Best ETFs for Beginners in 2025

9. Fidelity Freedom Index Funds

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• Style: Target-date
• Assets under management (collectively): $163.6 billion
• Expense ratio: 0.12%, or $1.20 per year for every $1,000 invested

Target-date funds are the ultimate buy-and-hold instrument, meant to stay in your portfolio for literally decades.

Target-date funds shift their asset allocation over time to meet investors’ changing needs as they age. A person who’s, say, 25 in 2025 would expect to retire in 2065, so they’d buy a fund with a target retirement date of 2065. That fund will probably start out with a very heavy allocation to stocks (to grow the investors’ wealth), but as the years roll on and the fund approaches its target retirement date, it will start putting more of its assets into bonds (to protect the investors’ wealth).

Many fund providers have at least one target-date series, though larger asset managers sometimes offer more. Fidelity is well outside the norm, however, with a whopping four—and the highest-rated among them are the Fidelity Freedom Index Funds.

You can read our coverage of Fidelity’s full set of target-date lineups to get a better idea of how these funds work. But you should know that Fidelity Freedom Index Funds, which are built exclusively from Fidelity’s lineup of low-cost index funds, are a rarity—few target-date series can boast a Gold Medalist rating. That rating is due in no small part to extremely low costs. Unlike actively managed target-date funds whose management fees tend to be different across the series, all Fidelity Freedom Index Funds charge the same fee: 0.12%.

Here’s a quick look at the full lineup:

• Fidelity Freedom Index 2010 Fund (FKIFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2015 Fund (FLIFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2020 Fund (FPIFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2025 Fund (FQIFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2030 Fund (FXIFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2035 Fund (FIHFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2040 Fund (FBIFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2045 Fund (FIOFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2050 Fund (FIPFX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2055 Fund (FDEWX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2060 Fund (FDKLX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2065 Fund (FFIJX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index 2070 Fund (FRBVX)
• Fidelity Freedom Index Income Fund (FIKFX)

Fidelity Freedom Index Income Fund (FIKFX), by the way, is designed for people who have reached retirement, and it boasts the most conservative asset blend. When a Fidelity Freedom Index target-date fund expires, it merges with Fidelity Freedom Index Income.

Interestingly, Fidelity actually has two target-date lineups rated Gold. The other is the Fidelity Flex Freedom Blend Fund series, which holds a blend of index and actively managed Fidelity funds. However, the “Flex” designation refers to a share class you can only buy with certain Fidelity accounts; the Fidelity Freedom Index Funds mentioned here are open to everyone.

Want to learn more about Fidelity Freedom Index Funds? Check out the Fidelity provider site.

Related: 15 Best ETFs to Buy for a Prosperous 2025

Learn More About These and Other Funds With Morningstar Investor

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If you’re buying a fund you plan on holding for years (if not forever), you want to know you’re making the right selection. And Morningstar Investor can help you do that.

Morningstar Investor provides a wealth of information and comparable data points about mutual funds and ETFs—fees, risk, portfolio composition, performance, distributions, and more. Morningstar experts also provide detailed explanations and analysis of many of the funds the site covers.

With Morningstar Investor, you’ll enjoy a wealth of features, including Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray®, stock and fund watchlists, news and commentary, screeners, and more. And you can try it before you buy it. Right now, Morningstar Investor is offering a free seven-day trial. You can check out the current deal, as well as discounted rates for students and teachers, on Morningstar Investor’s website.

 

Fidelity’s Best Index Funds: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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What is the minimum investment amount on Fidelity index funds?

Fidelity’s index funds make plenty of sense for investors of all shapes and sizes, but they have a particular appeal among people who don’t have much money to work with. That’s because many Fidelity index funds have no investment minimums—you can literally start with as little as $1.

That’s extremely beneficial in self-directed accounts like a brokerage or health savings account (HSA). Many mutual funds from other providers require high minimums in the thousands of dollars, hamstringing investors with little capital to work with.

Why does a fund’s expense ratio matter so much?

Every dollar you pay in expenses is a dollar that comes directly out of your returns. So, it is absolutely in your best interests to keep your expense ratios to an absolute minimum.

The expense ratio is the percentage of your investment lost each year to management fees, trading expenses and other fund expenses. Because index funds are passively managed and don’t have large staffs of portfolio managers and analysts to pay, they tend to have some of the lowest expense ratios of all mutual funds.

This matters because every dollar not lost to expenses is a dollar that is available to grow and compound. And over an investing lifetime, even a half a percent can have a huge impact. If you invest just $1,000 in a fund generating 5% per year after fees, over a 30-year horizon, it will grow to $4,116. However, if you invested $1,000 in the same fund, but it had an additional 50 basis points in fees (so it only generated 4.5% per year in returns), it would grow to only $3,584 over the same period.

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