S&P Global provides an annual "scorecard" of how large-cap mutual funds perform in comparison with the S&P 500, and nearly every year, most mutual funds underperform. In 2025, for example, 79% of funds underperformed when the S&P 500 gained more than 16%. When the market is thriving, it's driven by growth stocks, and many growth-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are, in fact, outperforming the market right now. Since it's a weighted passive index fund, its components are determined by the index and weighted accordingly. That could be riskier than having components equally weighted, but the risk is minimized by having 321 components in total.