Should You Buy the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF After the Recent Stock Market Sell-Off? History Offers a Crystal-Clear Answer.

1 hour ago 3

Anthony Di Pizio, The Motley Fool

Thu, March 19, 2026 astatine 10:05 AM CDT 5 min read

The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) is America's astir wide followed stock-market scale due to the fact that of its diversified creation and strict introduction criteria. It hosts 500 companies from 11 antithetic sectors of the economy, and those companies indispensable support a minimum marketplace capitalization of $22.7 billion. In addition, they indispensable beryllium profitable.

This ensures the S&P 500 lone holds the highest-quality names, which is wherefore it has averaged an awesome yearly instrumentality of 10.6% since its inception successful 1957. However, it's disconnected to a volatile commencement successful 2026 arsenic it's mislaid astir 5% of its highest worth truthful far, arsenic geopolitical tensions person created a precise tricky situation for investors.

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The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) is an exchange-traded money (ETF) that tracks the show of the S&P 500 by holding the aforesaid stocks and maintaining akin weightings. Could the caller sell-off successful the scale beryllium a bully buying opportunity, oregon should investors beryllium connected the sidelines? History offers a precise wide answer.

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The S&P 500 is weighted by marketplace capitalization, truthful the largest companies successful the scale person a greater power implicit its show than the smallest. Therefore, adjacent though the scale hosts companies from 11 antithetic sectors, immoderate person a importantly higher practice than others.

Below are the 5 largest sectors successful S&P 500, on with their weightings and astir invaluable companies.

S&P 500 Sector

Weighting

Most Valuable Companies

1. Information technology	32.4%	Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft
2. Financials	12.5%	Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, Visa
3. Communication services	10.5%	Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Netflix
4. Consumer discretionary	10%	Amazon, Tesla, Home Depot
5. Healthcare	9.8%	Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie

Data source: Vanguard. Chart by author. Sector weightings are close arsenic of Feb. 28, 2026, and are taxable to change.

The different six S&P 500 sectors are industrials, user staples, energy, utilities, materials, and existent estate.

Information exertion is location to much trillion-dollar enterprises than immoderate different sector. Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft are 3 of the world's largest companies, sharing a combined marketplace capitalization of $10.9 trillion. Then there's Broadcom, with a marketplace headdress of $1.5 trillion, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which is worthy $1.7 trillion.

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