NEW (better) 4 ETF Portfolio beats everything! (BEST Simple Investing Guide 2026 📈)

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*(Portfolio Review, Allocation, Budget Help, Personal Finance, Investing, etc. NOTE: NOT financial advice as I am not a financial advisor)

Thank you so much for your information , I have been learned. Done good for investment 👍👍👍👍👍❤️❤️❤️🌺

What is SPYM and QQQM?

I have a Schwab account but it won't let buy shares using a set price, only by shares. I can buy using trial and error with decimals of shares, like buying 1.66 shares or .48 shares….but I'm not doing that. They have a "slice option" where you can buy slices of company shares, but not ETFs

This was one of the clearest beginner investing videos I’ve seen. I really appreciated how you explained index funds and broke down things like compound interest, expense ratios, and even emotional mistakes like panic selling. The live example of buying a stock made everything less intimidating too. Thanks for making investing feel more approachable—definitely bookmarking this one!

isn't this too much overlap???

I guess I don't understand ETFs. Aren't these just funds that track groups of stocks, and thus doesn't guarantee ownership of anything tangible? Like a silver ETF isn't a claim in silver, it's a gamble on the value of silver. Maybe I am misunderstanding

Maxed out my 2025 Roth IRA. Working on maxing out my 2026 Roth IRA & HSA.
4 etfs.
FXAIX (mutual fund, I know)
SMH
SCHG
SCHD

For the growth section of the 4 fund portfolio do we buy something like VGT/FTEC or SCHG/QQQM/QQQ?

to save you guys 17 minutes of your life
1) far from retirement :
80% sp500 or their analogue (something like iShares MSCI ACWI UCITS for europe)
20% real market high dividend yield (Vanguard FTSE All-World High Dividend Yield for europe)
2) close to retirement or on retirement
50/50

This all may work if the assumption is that the US companies will always go up in the long term and lead the world which is questionable. What will happen if not? I would remove the SP 500 one and add one tracking value stocks from developed countries worldwide. I will also track MSCI Europe High Dividend Yield index companies for diversification. Thus still keeping the technology growth via Nasdaq tracking ETF, the quality growth tracking the beat companies in the world and keeping the dividend ETF but as a matter of diversification moving it to EU. If I have to add a 4th I would use ETF tracking Asian developed countries excluding China or even just Korean top companies quality ETF

Hey! I love your video!
Can you share your version of your 3-4 porfolio for non US tax residents? I'm my case, I invest on the US market but I need to try to avoid dividend/interest because I have to pay 30% of them as withholding taxes :/

Do you use covered call ETF to generate income. I’m already in retirement and want additional income.

SPMO has never lost to the SPY. Less dowenside risk. More upside gains. SPMO should be your foundation, Not SPY. Spy is redundant .

I wonder what you think of GAM?

What about the S & P 100?

Is schy like schd? I owned schy. Saw how over bought it was and sold took my win. But i like an international dividend fund. Any recommendations. Also just to throw it out to you all. IXN global Tech fund. VOLT AND TRFK i got into for some longer term AI plays and don’t overlook water. FIW
These are just some thoughts primarily i hold SCHB, ONEQ, SCHV, DGRO, SCHD and FDVV. Their overlap by weight is minimal and all do a little different as I watch them. I did grab some DJD when the dow dipped so far so good. Best of luck to everyone

SCHD and SCHG are my entire portfolio but I like the SPMO option if rates drop

Home Bias bro

For me 25% SPYM, 20% SPMO, 20% SCHD, 13% QQQM, 7% SCHG (while very similar to QQQM, its different enough to have both in my opinion), 7% VGT, 7% VYMI (which is one of my favorite stocks and better than VXUS in my opinion), and lastly 1% VTI just cause 🤷🏻‍♂️

The only one not overlapping is SCHD. The other 3 are overlapping like crazy. This seems like bad advice quit honestly.

I started my ETF journey just last week and bought twice now – QQQM, VOO, SCHD & SPMO, 25% each. Ten years away from retirement and also keeping my other long-running investments going.

Hi Prof G, I am a 68 yo former FA, and enjoy your podcasts. Agree with you on FDVV/VOO, SCHD, SCHG, and SPMO, but also use a portion in short term corporate bond ladder for some stability. Keep up the good work!

Out of SPYM, SPMO, QQQM, and SCHD, only SCHD is playing defence—everything else is riding the Tech/AI/Semi wave. Might be wiser to mix it up: 50% growth, 25% defence, and 25% gold for when geopolitics decides to show up uninvited. 😏

I’m 39 and I can retire in 20 years but I think right now I’m going to go heavier in SPMO than QQQM or SCHG.
30% SPYM
35% SPMO
25% SCHD
10% QQQM

Even with dividends, the return can be negative due to a bear Market

Prof G great content. Question:
As the time goes, different investments appreciate differently and % allocations change.
For example, growth holdings percentage increase (or decrease) after several months and the 30-25-25-20 balance is broken.
How do you make periodic adjustments?
Is the goal to keep the current value of the holdings at the suggested percentages? Or do you keep buying at 30-25-25-20% without regard to where your portfolio is sitting at the moment????

I recently spoke to financial advisors at each of my two mainstream banks. Each spent about 45 minutes with me showing graphs, pie charts, explaining investment options, and then suggested some sample portfolios depending on how I balanced my goals between short term investment income and long term growth. I reviewed the materials they gave me the following day. They were similar, but slightly different. Then I got the bright idea to ask AI, ChatGPT and Gemini. I was amazed at how much the information they gave overlapped, including recommended ways to balance the portfolio depending on my goals. Plus you can pester it with one question after another all day and your not frustrating anyone by taking up their time. All the information you need is out there. AI gathers just what you need in a few seconds and presents it in a clear and helpful way. Basically, among the many jobs AI will replace, Financial Advisor is one of them. If you do decide to use one, make sure they aren't getting commissions, look for advisors that 'fee only' as opposed to 'fee based' which means they are getting commissions which will surely be a conflict of interest in their selections. I ended up going with a fee only robo advisor at one of my banks. Their advisors are fee only as I recommended, but since I don't need to lean on them for advice, I went with their robo advisor which charges something like 0.30% vs 0.79%. I was tempted to do it myself and use AI for rebalancing every few months, but I opted to let the robo advisor handle that which it does as often as needed. Of course you have full access to your portfolio, can see what is in there, the changes on rebalancing, and you have access to sell whatever at anytime. I added additional funds and it spreaded it out through the portfolio the next day, so real convenient. I'm a fan.

Excellent picks !! I identify with person #2 but I'd invest more like person #1.

Thank you ❤❤

Hi im following you professor G im new in investing . Can i start now investing even do stocks down because of war. Thanks

I’ve tried just about every strategy out there, read the books, bought the courses, sat through the webinars, and I’m still getting smoked by this market. I’m not chasing some get rich quick dream, I just want to stop losing and learn how to properly hold coins or stocks without panic selling every dip or getting shaken out too early.
.

So youre no longer interested in VYM ?

These will all crash in a stock market crash. Equities are all highly correlated and there's overlap. You'd be better off with a technology ETF and then another sector ETF like utilities that have a low correlation to weather a downturn.

So you recommend that 90% of my portfolio should be US AI and tech companies? You should return those diploms you have behind you. 😀

You can't know if US tech companies are bubble or not, it can pop next day, so I will not follow your advice to not invest into international ETF, I just don't trust USA anymore and many Europeans don't, there is also risk that your orange clown will steal money from investors or something, you need your portfolio properly diversified over whole world. It doesn't matter if that corporation is doing bussines gobally when all money go thru USA, so your orange king could step on it if he wanted.
Your hints can be good for american investors, but you have to consider much more things when you are not from USA and you don't even have a bank account in USD.
When I look at ETFs that are available in Europe, ETFs that follow S&P 500 index have 15% year average in last 5 years and vanguard all-world has 11.8%, but all-world has a better result in last year and because of US tech bubble, most of S&P 500 are already included, also, when you put it only to S&P 500, you are missing emerging markets like Taiwan, China, South Korea…..do you have a crystal ball when you believe that USA dominance will be still a thing 20 or 30 years in the future? Humanoid robots are already walking in chinese cities, I don't support chinese commies, but I am just trying to say that you can't be sure that S&P 500 will overperform global ETFs in the future, another very interesting market is south America, they all can grow pretty fast and overperform you before you even realize it. Look for example at Poland, 20 years ago, it was a poor postcommunist country, now they are one of leading powers in EU and people are moving there because of money go there and you are betting all your future only on USA just because of you believe in your corrupt semi-democratic (no, USA is really not a democratic and free country compared to what we call democracy in Europe) country ruled by authoritative presidends that can completly screw your economy over night, that's something you have to consider when you invest for 30 years, time has changed and even investors will start moving out of US stocks, many people deny to invest into companies like Microsoft, Meta and Google just becuase they don't want to support their nazi vision of the world where few US corporations are ruling and owning everything. Many countries are doing anti-corporation and anti us social media laws to protect their kids from US brainrot.
Many countries think about canceling their military orders from USA and buy from european weapon companies instead and you will definitely notice it on cashflow in the future.

US dominance was build on trust, most of freedom world trusted in USA and their economy, but this system is collapsing right now.

Only think I agree with you is that bonds are pointless, I can just let my money on my saving account with 3.8% interest up to 15 000 eur.

sir please recommend one ETF in place of SCHD for people who are not interested in dividents.

Unfortunately, not all of us were financially literate early in life. I was 45 when I finally took the time to educate myself and start making real changes. At that point, I was $97,000 in debt with zero savings or retirement. Fast forward just two years, I'm now completely debt-free with a net worth of over $3M.That may not sound like a huge number to some, but to me, it's something I'm incredibly proud of. I'm currently fast-tracking my wealth-building journey, already investing $550,000 and owing absolutely nothing to anyone.Since I joined this channel three year ago, my mindset and financial habits have transformed. It's a good feeling. May God continue to bless you.

Unfortunately, not all of us were financially literate early in life. I was 45 when I finally took the time to educate myself and start making real changes. At that point, I was $97,000 in debt with zero savings or retirement. Fast forward just two years, I'm now completely debt-free with a net worth of over $3M.That may not sound like a huge number to some, but to me, it's something I'm incredibly proud of. I'm currently fast-tracking my wealth-building journey, already investing $550,000 and owing absolutely nothing to anyone.Since I joined this channel three year ago, my mindset and financial habits have transformed. It's a good feeling. May God continue to bless you.

At 63, what is the asset allocation for these ETF's?

Professor G, isn't there a lot of overlap in the first two categories you mention?
Since some of the largest tech stocks make up the S&P 500, aren't you just duplicating say the first 5 holdings but in two different ETFs?
Some clarification here would be helpful.

ETF: Grid / DTCR / Pave
for me the infustructure for AI is the future even the cleaning enegy

You really only need two…VOO, QQQ.
You will find ETF's which will beat them for short stretches but for long-term investors, it would be really tough to beat those two.